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Familial Properties is the first full-length history of Vietnamese
gender relations in the precolonial period. Author Nhung Tuyet Tran
shows how, despite the bias in law and practice of a patrilineal
society based on primogeniture, some women were able to manipulate
the system to their own advantage. Women succeeded in taking
pragmatic advantage of socioeconomic turmoil during a time of war
and chaos to acquire wealth and, to some extent, control what
happened to their property.Drawing from legal, literary, and
religious sources written in the demotic script, classical Chinese,
and European languages, Tran argues that beginning in the fifteenth
century, state and local communities produced laws and morality
codes limiting women's participation in social life. Then in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, economic and political
turmoil led the three competing states - the Mac, Trinh, and Nguyen
- to increase their military service demands, producing labor
shortages in the fields and markets of the countryside. Women
filled the vacuum left by their brothers, husbands, and fathers,
and as they worked the lands and tended the markets, they
accumulated monetary capital. To protect that capital, they
circumvented local practice and state law guaranteeing patrilineal
inheritance rights by soliciting the cooperation of male leaders.
In exchange for monetary and landed donations to the local
community, these women were elected to become spiritual patrons of
the community whose souls would be forever preserved by collective
offering. By tracing how the women, local leaders, and court elites
negotiated gender models to demarcate their authority, Tran
demonstrates that despite the Confucian ethos of the times,
survival strategies were able to subvert gender norms and create
new cultural models. Gender, thus, as a signifier of power
relations, was central to the relationship between state and local
communities in early modern Vietnam. Rich and detailed in its use
of documentary evidence from a range of archives, this work will be
of great interest to scholars of Southeast Asian history and the
comparative study of gender.
It is a cherished belief among Thai people that their country was
never colonized. Yet politicians, scholars, and other media figures
chronically inveigh against Western colonialism and the imperialist
theft of Thai territory. Thai historians insist that the country
adapted to the Western-dominated world order more successfully than
other Southeast Asian kingdoms and celebrate their proud history of
independence. But many Thai leaders view the West as a threat and
portray Thailand as a victim. Clearly Thailand's relationship with
the West is ambivalent. The Lost Territories explores this
conundrum by examining two important and contrasting strands of
Thai historiography: the well-known Royal-Nationalist ideology,
which celebrates Thailand's long history of uninterrupted
independence; and what the author terms "National Humiliation
discourse," its mirror image. Shane Strate examines the origins and
consequences of National Humiliation discourse, showing how the
modern Thai state has used the idea of national humiliation to
sponsor a form of anti-Western nationalism. Unlike triumphalist
Royal-Nationalist narratives, National Humiliation history depicts
Thailand as a victim of Western imperialist bullying. Focusing on
key themes such as extraterritoriality, trade imbalances, and
territorial loss, National Humiliation history maintains that the
West impeded Thailand's development even while professing its
support and cooperation. Although the state remains the hero in
this narrative, it is a tragic heroism defined by suffering and
foreign oppression. Through his insightful analysis of state and
media sources, Strate demonstrates how Thai politicians have
deployed National Humiliation imagery in support of ethnic
chauvinism and military expansion. He shows how the discourse
became the ideological foundation of Thailand's irredentist
strategy, the state's anti-Catholic campaign, and its acceptance of
pan-Asianism during World War II; and how the "state as victim"
narrative has been used by politicians to redefine Thai identity
and elevate the military into the role of national savior. The Lost
Territories will be of particular interest to historians and
political scientists for the light it sheds on many episodes of
Thai foreign policy, including the contemporary dispute over Preah
Vihear. The book's analysis of the manipulation of historical
memory will interest academics exploring similar phenomena
worldwide.
How do the people of a morally shattered culture and nation find
ways to go on living? Cambodians confronted this challenge
following the collective disasters of the American bombing, the
civil war, and the Khmer Rouge genocide. The magnitude of violence
and human loss, the execution of artists and intellectuals, the
erasure of individual and institutional cultural memory all caused
great damage to Cambodian arts, culture, and society. Author Boreth
Ly explores the "traces" of this haunting past in order to
understand how Cambodians at home and in the diasporas deal with
trauma on such a vast scale. Ly maintains that the production of
visual culture by contemporary Cambodian artists and
writers-photographers, filmmakers, court dancers, and
poets-embodies traces of trauma, scars leaving an indelible mark on
the body and the psyche. His book considers artists of different
generations and family experiences: a Cambodian-American woman
whose father sent her as a baby to the United States to be adopted;
the Cambodian-French film-maker, Rithy Panh, himself a survivor of
the Khmer Rouge, whose film The Missing Picture was nominated for
an Oscar in 2014; a young Cambodian artist born in 1988-part of the
"post-memory" generation. The works discussed include a variety of
materials and remnants from the historical past: the broken pieces
of a shattered clay pot, the scarred landscape of bomb craters, the
traditional symbolism of the checkered scarf called krama, as well
as the absence of a visual archive. Boreth Ly's poignant book
explores obdurate traces that are fragmented and partial, like the
acts of remembering and forgetting. His interdisciplinary approach,
combining art history, visual studies, psychoanalysis, cultural
studies, religion, and philosophy, is particularly attuned to the
diverse body of material discussed in his book, which includes
photographs, video installations, performance art, poetry, and
mixed media. By analyzing these works through the lens of trauma,
he shows how expressions of a national trauma can contribute to
healing and the reclamation of national identity.
For over a century French officials in Indochina systematically
uprooted métis children—those born of Southeast Asian mothers
and white, African, or Indian fathers—from their homes. In many
cases, and for a wide range of reasons—death, divorce, the end of
a romance, a return to France, or because the birth was the result
of rape—the father had left the child in the mother's care.
Although the program succeeded in rescuing homeless children from
life on the streets, for those in their mothers' care it was
disastrous. Citing an 1889 French law and claiming that raising
children in the Southeast Asian cultural milieu was tantamount to
abandonment, colonial officials sought permanent, ""protective""
custody of the children, placing them in state-run orphanages or
educational institutions to be transformed into ""little
Frenchmen."" The Uprooted offers an in-depth investigation of the
colony's child-removal program: the motivations behind it,
reception of it, and resistance to it. Métis children, Eurasians
in particular, were seen as a threat on multiple fronts—colonial
security, white French dominance, and the colonial gender order.
Officials feared that abandoned métis might become paupers or
prostitutes, thereby undermining white prestige. Métis were
considered particularly vulnerable to the lure of anticolonialist
movements—their ambiguous racial identity and outsider status, it
was thought, might lead them to rebellion. Métischildren who could
pass for white also played a key role in French plans to augment
their own declining numbers and reproduce the French race, nation,
and, after World War II, empire. French child welfare organizations
continued to work in Vietnam well beyond independence, until 1975.
The story of the métis children they sought to help highlights the
importance—and vulnerability—of indigenous mothers and children
to the colonial project. Part of a larger historical trend, the
Indochina case shows striking parallels to that of Australia’s
“Stolen Generation” and the Indian and First Nations boarding
schools in the United States and Canada. This poignant and little
known story will be of interest to scholars of French and Southeast
Asian studies, colonialism, gender studies, and the historiography
of the family.
How do the people of a morally shattered culture and nation find
ways to go on living? Cambodians confronted this challenge
following the collective disasters of the American bombing, the
civil war, and the Khmer Rouge genocide. The magnitude of violence
and human loss, the execution of artists and intellectuals, the
erasure of individual and institutional cultural memory all caused
great damage to Cambodian arts, culture, and society. Author Boreth
Ly explores the "traces" of this haunting past in order to
understand how Cambodians at home and in the diasporas deal with
trauma on such a vast scale. Ly maintains that the production of
visual culture by contemporary Cambodian artists and
writers-photographers, filmmakers, court dancers, and
poets-embodies traces of trauma, scars leaving an indelible mark on
the body and the psyche. His book considers artists of different
generations and family experiences: a Cambodian-American woman
whose father sent her as a baby to the United States to be adopted;
the Cambodian-French film-maker, Rithy Panh, himself a survivor of
the Khmer Rouge, whose film The Missing Picture was nominated for
an Oscar in 2014; a young Cambodian artist born in 1988-part of the
"post-memory" generation. The works discussed include a variety of
materials and remnants from the historical past: the broken pieces
of a shattered clay pot, the scarred landscape of bomb craters, the
traditional symbolism of the checkered scarf called krama, as well
as the absence of a visual archive. Boreth Ly's poignant book
explores obdurate traces that are fragmented and partial, like the
acts of remembering and forgetting. His interdisciplinary approach,
combining art history, visual studies, psychoanalysis, cultural
studies, religion, and philosophy, is particularly attuned to the
diverse body of material discussed in his book, which includes
photographs, video installations, performance art, poetry, and
mixed media. By analyzing these works through the lens of trauma,
he shows how expressions of a national trauma can contribute to
healing and the reclamation of national identity.
Caged in on the Outside is an intimate ethnographic exploration of
the ways in which Minangkabau people understand human value.
Minangkabau, an Islamic society in Indonesia that is also the
largest matrilineal society in the world, has long fascinated
anthropologists. Gregory Simon’s book, based on extended
ethnographic research in the small city of Bukittinggi, shines new
light on Minangkabau social life by delving into people’s
interior lives, calling into question many assumptions about
Southeast Asian values and the nature of Islamic practice. It
offers a deeply human portrait that will engage readers interested
in Indonesia, Islam, and psychological anthropology and those
concerned with how human beings fashion and reflect on the moral
meanings of their lives. Simon focuses on the tension between the
values of social integration and individual autonomy—both of
which are celebrated in this Islamic trading society. The book
explores a series of ethnographic themes, each one illustrating a
facet of this tension and its management in contemporary
Minangkabau society: the moral structure of the city and its
economic life, the nature of Minangkabau ethnic identity, the
etiquette of everyday interactions, conceptions of self and its
boundaries, hidden spaces of personal identity, and engagements
with Islamic traditions. Simon draws on interviews with Minangkabau
men and women, demonstrating how individuals engage with cultural
forms and refashion them in the process: forms of etiquette are
transformed into a series of symbols tattooed on and then erased
from a man’s skin; a woman shares a poem expressing an identity
rooted in what cannot be directly revealed; a man puzzles over his
neglect of Islamic prayers that have the power to bring him
happiness. Applying the lessons of the Minangkabau case more
broadly to debates on moral life and subjectivity, Simon makes the
case that a deep understanding of moral conceptions and practices,
including those of Islam, can never be reached simply by
delineating their abstract logics or the public messages they send.
Instead, we must examine the subtle meanings these conceptions and
practices have for the people who live them and how they interact
with the enduring tensions of multidimensional human selves.
Borrowing a Minangkabau saying, he maintains that whether emerging
in moments of suffering or flourishing, moral subjectivity is
always complex, organized by ambitions as elusive as being “caged
in on the outside.”
Saving Buddhism explores the dissonance between the goals of the
colonial state and the Buddhist worldview that animated Burmese
Buddhism at the turn of the twentieth century. For many Burmese,
the salient and ordering discourse was not nation or modernity but
sasana, the life of the Buddha’s teachings. Burmese Buddhists
interpreted the political and social changes between 1890 and 1920
as signs that the Buddha’s sasana was deteriorating. This fear of
decline drove waves of activity and organizing to prevent the loss
of the Buddha’s teachings. Burmese set out to save Buddhism, but
achieved much more: they took advantage of the indeterminacy of the
moment to challenge the colonial frameworks that were beginning to
shape their world. Author Alicia Turner has examined thousands of
rarely used sources - newspapers and Buddhist journals, donation
lists, and colonial reports—to trace three discourses set in
motion by the colonial encounter: the evolving understanding of
sasana as an orienting framework for change, the adaptive modes of
identity made possible in the moral community, and the ongoing
definition of religion as a site of conflict and negotiation of
autonomy. Beginning from an understanding that defining and
redefining the boundaries of religion operated as a key technique
of colonial power—shaping subjects through European categories
and authorizing projects of colonial governmentality—she explores
how Burmese Buddhists became actively engaged in defining and
inflecting religion to shape their colonial situation and forward
their own local projects. Saving Buddhism intervenes not just in
scholarly conversations about religion and colonialism, but in
theoretical work in religious studies on the categories of
“religion” and “secular.” It contributes to ongoing studies
of colonialism, nation, and identity in Southeast Asian studies by
working to denaturalize nationalist histories. It also engages
conversations on millennialism and the construction of identity in
Buddhist studies by tracing the fluid nature of sasana as a
discourse. The layers of Buddhist history that emerge challenge us
to see multiple modes of identity in colonial modernity and offer
insights into the instabilities of categories we too often take for
granted.
How are meta-narratives of development entangled in people's
identities and life trajectories? How do they inhabit people's
histories, their understandings of their place in the world, and
their dreams for the future? The idea of development has been
deconstructed and scrutinized as a "Western" metaphor ordering
global difference and as a banner under which diverse schemes for
societal improvement find legitimacy and common purpose. But how is
development assimilated into the worldviews of development's
subjects? How does it reshape identities and in what ways is it
reshaped in the process? Drawing on a decade of ethnographic
research on the Philippine island of Siquijor, In Pursuit of
Progress explores myths, meanings, and practices of development and
its counterparts, progress and modernization. It does so not only
by considering development as planned, community-wide interventions
aimed at society-wide improvements in living standards, but by
recognizing that, as a cognitive tool for organizing relationships
between people, development is personal. For Siquijodnon,
development, or kalamboan, is also a process of self-transformation
concerning changes in knowledge, body, roles, and cultural
orientation. Emblems as diverse as skin color, Christianity, infant
formula, and infrastructure make statements about development on
Siquijor. Kalamboan, is bound up with social mobility, consumption,
and status, but so too is it imbued with ideals of the "simple
life," a life of austerity and attention to social relationships,
and with other assumptions about how people should live. Author
Hannah Bulloch analyzes development not only as a prescription for
material aspiration but also for moral endeavor. In Pursuit of
Progress, offers rich, ethnographic insights into contemporary
Visayan culture, engaging with questions of enduring significance
in Philippines studies, including livelihood change, "colonial
mentality," everyday politics, and moral economy. It will
contribute to debates in anthropology, sociology, and development
studies regarding the ways in which discourses of development act
upon local and global power relations.
An analysis of how Indonesia's policies on culture, religion, and
class affect a particular ethnic group--the Karo.
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