Southeast Asian Studies Research Articles

Shaping Southeast Asian Studies For The Future

Southeast Asian Studies is an important educational and scholarly research platform to understand the different aspects of the Southeast Asian region.  Western scholars have contributed significant research produced under the programmes;   local researchers have added their voice to the study of the region. However, Andaya (2017) suggested that the field of SEAS should be mindful of its relevance to the current generation, and its development and progress should be in-line with the changes in contemporary scholarly needs of Southeast Asia. She asserted that the world and Southeast Asia have been transformed. However, the research and teaching approach and the scope of the programme remains unchanged. A critical review and rethink of the field of study in the region is urgent.  SEAS needs to be reshaped to be relevant and progressive to suit the current scenario.  This paper will examine whether SEAS could move away from its conventional teaching and research approach, and undergo a rebranding exercise that will be compatible to meet the demands of the changing world.  The paper will also allude to potential challenges in reshaping the form and content of SEAS in the region.  Keyword: Southeast Asian Studies, SEAS, teaching, research, publication, rebranding, reshaping, challenges

Rebranding Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia with different geographical landscapes and inhabited by diversities of people with unique cultures and recognize as Asian cultural mosaic and branding this region as a fast growing in many aspects, politics, economy, infrastructure and cultural development. The region is sharing development concept, the knowledge-based economy and the global environment, strongly followed branding and rebranding strategies to garner more economic benefits. No doubt that the region is also facing a great challenge from internal and external factors and the region from time to time need to review their internal and external policies. All policies towards economics, politics and social enable an individual country in Southeast Asia change the outlook of the country in facing the external world like Malaysia. It will affect the relations and cooperation bilaterally, regionally and globally especially diplomatic, international relations and economic relations. The possible and broader questions related to the concerns could be how these were reframed and rebranded to benefit countries and what were the impacts of rebranding on cultures, norms, values, practices and traditional lifestyles? All these issues were discussed at the 7th International Conference on Southeast Asia (ICONSEA 2017). This will discuss a selected paper presented in this conference in line with the main theme of the conference rebranding Southeast Asia.  Keywords: rebranding, Southeast Asia, ASEAN, Southeast Asian Studies, ICONSEA2017, social-politics, culture and economy

Shaping Southeast Asian Studies For The Future

Southeast Asian Studies is an important educational and scholarly research platform to understand the different aspects of the Southeast Asian region. Western scholars have contributed significant research produced under the programmes; local researchers have added their voice to the study of the region. However, Andaya (2017) suggested that the field of SEAS should be mindful of its relevance to the current generation, and its development and progress should be in-line with the changes in contemporary scholarly needs of Southeast Asia. She asserted that the world and Southeast Asia have been transformed. However, the research and teaching approach and the scope of the programme remains unchanged. A critical review and rethink of the field of study in the region is urgent. SEAS needs to be reshaped to be relevant and progressive to suit the current scenario. This paper will examine whether SEAS could move away from its conventional teaching and research approach, and undergo a rebranding exercise that will be compatible to meet the demands of the changing world. The paper will also allude to potential challenges in reshaping the form and content of SEAS in the region. Keyword: Southeast Asian Studies, SEAS, teaching, research, publication, rebranding, reshaping, challenges

Rebranding Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia with different geographical landscapes and inhabited by diversities of people with unique cultures and recognize as Asian cultural mosaic and branding this region as a fast growing in many aspects, politics, economy, infrastructure and cultural development. The region is sharing development concept, the knowledge-based economy and the global environment, strongly followed branding and rebranding strategies to garner more economic benefits. No doubt that the region is also facing a great challenge from internal and external factors and the region from time to time need to review their internal and external policies. All policies towards economics, politics and social enable an individual country in Southeast Asia change the outlook of the country in facing the external world like Malaysia. It will affect the relations and cooperation bilaterally, regionally and globally especially diplomatic, international relations and economic relations. The possible and broader questions related to the concerns could be how these were reframed and rebranded to benefit countries and what were the impacts of rebranding on cultures, norms, values, practices and traditional lifestyles? All these issues were discussed at the 7th International Conference on Southeast Asia (ICONSEA 2017). This will discuss a selected paper presented in this conference in line with the main theme of the conference rebranding Southeast Asia. Keywords: rebranding, Southeast Asia, ASEAN, Southeast Asian Studies, ICONSEA2017, social-politics, culture and economy

Factory performance and decision-making authority between headquarters, expatriates, and local employees in Japanese MNCs in Southeast Asia

This study aims to clarify the relationship between foreign factory performance and the decision-making authority for manufacturing activities between headquarters, expatriates, and local employees. To investigate these relationships, we conducted logistic regression analysis based on a questionnaire survey of 246 Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries in Southeast Asia and multiple case studies. We found (1) a negative relationship between factory performance and the level of the headquarters’ authority, (2) a positive relationship between factory performance and the level of expatriates’ authority, and that (3) subsidiaries’ operating years and export ratio moderate the relationship between factory performance and expatriates’ authority.

Sharing and exchanging: understanding common grounds in northeast India

ABSTRACTNortheast India, a ‘zipper region’ that gives impetus to Southeast Asian and Himalasian studies, is marked by complexities and ambiguities. The paper examines the multiple identity construction in contemporary Assam, the central state of this region and seeks to recover the other experiences that make ethnic life-world possible while challenging the ethnocentric discourses—in academia, politics, public and social movements. Acknowledging the presence of common or possibly universal processes behind the production of such discourses, it aims to interrogate the factors that cut across socio-cultural, political-economical or ecological dimensions. It further examines the multiple discourses and narratives that makes that social possible in the region. In doing so, it locates the strategic positioning of such discourses and how they deal with Indian nation-state and beyond. This paper in essence is interested in the question of possibility of various discourses—as a question of post-history.

Thickening Transregionalism: Historical Formations of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Southeast Asia

This article offers an overview of science and technology studies (STS) in Southeast Asia, focusing particularly on historical formations of science, technology, and medicine in the region, loosely defined, though research using social science approaches comes within its scope. I ask whether we are fashioning an “autonomous” history of science in Southeast Asia—and whether this would be enough. Perhaps we need to explore further “Southeast Asia as method,” a thought style heralded here though remaining, I hope, productively ambiguous. This review contributes primarily to the development of postcolonial intellectual history in Southeast Asia and secondarily to our understanding of the globalization and embedding of science, technology, and medicine.

Time and Tide Wait for No Man: A Response to Warwick Anderson and Michael M. J. Fischer

The two leading scholars of EASTS reflect on two approaches of STS studies in East Asia and Southeast Asia: one that discusses the reactions, reflections, and recreations of scientific interventions and the other that looks for more strictly scientific contributions. I propose a third methodology that compares historical processes with oceanic flows. Scientific breakthroughs and attendant practices and emergences circulate beyond their controlling agents to interact with other currents and forces beyond their initial space-time horizons. They merge, converge, submerge, reemerge, create countercurrents, upwell, and return in other forms. Agency is important but deeply limited in historical processes. The ocean-atmosphere-land flows are both metaphorical and material. As material, they condition life and history on earth. The question that arises today is the extent to which the Anthropocene, an era where human activity represents the greatest influence on climate and the environment, will ravage the ocean and the degree to which the ocean will avenge our depredations. The social and historical study of science could do worse than track these flows and exchanges.

Myxomycete communities occurring in fragmented forest patches in two municipalities of Laguna, Philippines

In spite of the increasing number of myxomycete studies in the tropical Southeast Asia over the last decades, many forest patches are still left unexplored for the region, in particular in the Philippine archipelago. Thus, an assessment of myxomycete diversity, occurrence, and composition was carried out in forest fragments from two municipalities of the province of Laguna, Philippines. From the 12 established 5 m × 5 m plots, a total of 240 moist chamber cultures were prepared for this study and yielded 42 myxomycete species belonging to 14 genera. Rarefaction curves and several heterogeneity indices revealed higher species diversity in Los Baños than in Calauan. Moreover, the taxonomic diversity index also showed that the taxonomic diversity of myxomycete in Los Baños is more intuitively diverse than in Calauan. In terms of community analysis between the two municipalities, it showed that myxomycete communities clustered between different microhabitats. High values of coefficient of community and percentage similarity indices possibly implicates that spore dispersal in forest fragments in closer proximities may cause high number of shared species (60%). With an addition of Cribraria lepida as a new record for the country, this study now updates the myxomycete profile for Laguna, Philippines.

Sistem Pendukung Keputusan Pemilihan Negara Untuk Studi S1 di Asia Tenggara Berbasis Website dengan Menggunakan Metode Topsis

Southeast Asia is one part of the Asian country that has many leading universities, one of them in Indonesia. Therefore, many students wish to continue their undergraduate studies in Southeast Asia. However, students sometimes feel confused choosing a destination country for undergraduate study in Southeast Asia. Based on these problems, the authors make Decision Support System of State Election for Study S1 in Southeast Asia to assist students in choosing a country for study S1. The author makes this decision support system using 5 States as an alternative.This System using TOPSIS Method to calculate and determine which countries that would be the best recommendation for studies. This method could be effective for the recommendation.

Sistem Pendukung Keputusan Pemilihan Negara Untuk Studi S1 di Asia Tenggara Berbasis Website dengan Menggunakan Metode Topsis

Southeast Asia is one part of the Asian country that has many leading universities, one of them in Indonesia. Therefore, many students wish to continue their undergraduate studies in Southeast Asia. However, students sometimes feel confused choosing a destination country for undergraduate study in Southeast Asia. Based on these problems, the authors make Decision Support System of State Election for Study S1 in Southeast Asia to assist students in choosing a country for study S1. The author makes this decision support system using 5 States as an alternative.This System using TOPSIS Method to calculate and determine which countries that would be the best recommendation for studies. This method could be effective for the recommendation.

The therapeutic value of trauma stabilisation in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder - A Southeast Asian Study.

Southeast Asia suffers from various forms of natural disasters and interpersonal violence. This creates a large trauma population, while at the same time mental health services in this area are limited. The humanitarian organisation Trauma Aid Germany established trauma capacity building by training 37 local therapists in psycho-traumatology, including trauma stabilisation, in Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. This analysis examines the impact of trauma stabilisation as a sole treatment for traumatized clients. Clients were screened for PTSD using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire pre- and post-treatment. Analysis only included clients who had received trauma stabilisation, including psychoeducation, but no confrontation with the traumatic event. Trauma stabilisation was highly effective in reducing PTSD symptoms, with high remission from PTSD post-treatment. Trauma stabilisation affected all subscales of PTSD and was effective in clinical as well as subclinical traumatized clients. The research supports the notion that trauma stabilisation is a treatment effect for PTSD. It was highly effective in its own in reducing PTSD symptoms. Based on the analysis, trauma stabilisation was a safe, language independent treatment for PTSD sufficiently flexible to be sensitive to the client's context. Therapists can adapt the techniques to the individual client and his cultural, spiritual, developmental, cognitive and situational background. Trauma stabilisation is suitable for implementation in crisis areas. The research has also implications to the potential utilisation of para-professionals.

Change Vulnerability Forecasting Using Deep Learning Algorithm for Southeast Asia

Climate change is expected to change people’s livelihood in significant ways. Several vulnerability factors and readiness factors used for measuring the prediction index of that particular country on how vulnerable of a country towards global change. Primary data was collected from University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN). The data has been trained for the forecasting purpose with support from the validated statistical analysis. The summary of the predicted index is visualized using machine learning tools. The results developed the correlation between vulnerability and readiness factors and shows the stability of the country towards climate change. The framework is applied to synthesize findings from Prediction index studies in South East Asia in dealing with vulnerability to climate change.

Becoming other: literary multilingualism in the Chinese badlands

ABSTRACTMy essay concerns two Singapore novels: an ‘English’ text that switches at a key moment into Chinese (Vyvyane Loh’s Breaking the Tongue) (USA, 2004), and a ‘Chinese’ text that does the opposite (Joo Ming Chia’s Exile or Pursuit) (Singapore, 2015). Discussing the local and translocal significance of such experimentation, I suggest that the pursuit of bilingual/multilingual aesthe­tics in these works resists the linguistic monism that fosters restrictive identitarianisms in both the ‘Anglo’ and the ‘Chinese’ cultural domains. They gesture at an ongoing ‘Anglo-Chinese’ cultural syncretism pertinent to Singapore and Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau, and also other parts of the world. Because both works also affirm the mestizaje between regional Chinese and autochthonous Southeast Asian culture/s, I argue that they present new models for approaching Sinitic literary and cultural studies, and also for Southeast Asian studies more generally. Instead of the stagnant East–West master narrative, which is susceptible to populist and authoritarian manipulation in both East and West, the suggested approach orients discussion towards issues of ‘South-South’ (or East-Southeast Asian) cultural exchange and dialogue. This shift uncovers what I call ‘Badlands’ writing, which acts to undermine discourses of Chinese essentialism and exceptionalism.

P5491Predictors of left ventricular dysfunction in patients with Takayasus arteritis A single center Southeast Asian study

P5491Predictors of left ventricular dysfunction in patients with Takayasus arteritis A single center Southeast Asian study

Detecting and mapping annual newly-burned plots (NBP) of swiddening using historical Landsat data in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA) during 1988–2016

Swidden agriculture is by far the dominant land use system in the uplands of Southeast Asia (SEA), as well as other tropical regions, which plays an important role in the implementation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) of United Nations. To our knowledge, the long-term inter-annual area of newly burned plots (NBP) of swidden agriculture in mainland Southeast Asia is still not available, let alone in the whole tropics. With the strengthening regional geo-economic cooperation in SEA, swidden agriculture has experienced and/or is still experiencing extensive and drastic transformations into other diverse market-oriented land use types since the 1990s. In this study, high-level surface reflectance products of Landsat 4/5/7/8 family sensors including Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) acquired in March, April and May of each year between 1988 and 2016 were firstly utilized to detect and monitor the extent and area of NBP of swidden agriculture with multiple thresholds of four commonly-used vegetation indices, namely the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI), Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), in combination with local phenological features of swiddening and topographical data. The results showed that: (1) an annual average of 6.08×104 km2 of NBP of swidden agriculture, or 3.15% of the total land area of MSEA, were estimated in the past nearly three decades. (2) Annual NBP were primarily distributed in four major geomorphic units including the Central Range of Hills, Northern Mountainous Region, Western Myanmar Hills, and Annamite Chain. (3) A decadal average analysis indicated that the NBP of swidden agriculture opened year by year declined as a whole, especially after 2010, merely with an average of 5.23×104 km2. (4) The top ten provincial administrative units in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, which consistently accounted for over 90% of the newly opened swiddens of each country, showed distinct fluctuations in using slash-and-burn practices in the last decades. The Landsat-based (30 m) reconstructed 29-year longitudinal updated maps (including extent and area) of the NBP of swidden agriculture may contribute to REDD and local livelihood related studies in Continental Southeast Asia. Our study further demonstrated that the multiple vegetative indices thresholds approach holds great potential in detecting swidden agriculture in tropical mountainous regions.

Editorial Foreword

It is a pleasure to introduce this second issue of the enterprising new journal, IKAT: The Indonesian Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. It is breaking new ground in opening Indonesia to its region, and establishing a high standard of scholarly publication in English. It is good to see Southeast Asians taking up the challenge of understanding their own region. As the Orientalist tradition of Europe weakens, institutions and individuals in the region must take up the challenge of understanding, preserving and analyzing Southeast Asian cultures, many of them endangered. Southeast Asian Studies must return to Southeast Asia, and IKAT is certainly helping this process.

SEAS IN SEA: EMERGENCE, DEVELOPMENT, REBRANDING AND SUSTAINABILITY OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES IN MALAYSIA*

This article provides an introductory and brief overview of the research, publications, and achievements of Southeast Asian Studies in Malaysia, in particular, the role of the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Malaya. It briefly revisits the pre- and post-colonial times, when the subject of Southeast Asian Studies appealed to academics, administrators, and foreign experts. Since 1975, the Department has not only played the role of training young researchers in different issues on Southeast Asia but also provided a platform to local and foreign researchers to publish their scholarly work in JATI-Journal of Southeast Asian Studies and Borneo Research Journals that are both produced by the department annually. Keywords: Southeast Asian Studies, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, teaching, research, publication.

“Trust Me, I am the One Who Will Drain the Swamp”: An Interview With Walden Bello on Fascism in the Global South

Since the election of Narendra Modi in India in 2014 and Donald Trump in the USA in 2016, political analysts and commentators around the globe have increasingly used the concept of fascism to capture the rise of new right-wing authoritarianism in various countries. Activists and academics in Europe are much more reluctant to use the word fascism, for several reasons. One reason is that – because of the alarming associations which fascism evokes in German – the term was often instrumentalized, and used to discredit political opponents, without a sound theoretical analysis. There is also a big reluctance to transfer the term to countries outside Europe, especially to the countries in the South – because it would further relativize the concept. Walden Bello is a prominent voice who started using the concept of fascism since early 2017 for the new regime under Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. He repeated his analysis of Duterte as a “fascist original” and his regime as “creeping fascism” at the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) in July 2017 as well as in recent articles (Bello, 2017). In October 2017, Bello was among the founding members of a new group, the Laban ng Masa coalition to combat the “fascist” policy of Duterte (Villanueva, 2017). In his most recent paper in the Journal of Peasant Studies, he broadened his analysis and compared the rise of Fascism in Italy in the 1920s with the establishment of the New Order under Suharto in Indonesia in 1964/1965, Chile at times of the coup d’etat in 1973, Thailand in 1976, and the Philippines today (Bello, 2018). With his articles and his political campaigns, he opened a new chapter of academic discussion and political activism on fascism in the South. Walden Bello is currently a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and senior research fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies of Kyoto University in Japan. He served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines from 2009 to 2015, during which he was chairman of the Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs. In our interview conducted in December 2017, we discussed theoretical problems in dealing with the concept of fascism as well as strategic challenges for political activism.

Think of Me When I Am Gone: Assessing Faculty Archives at the Yale Peabody Museum

For universities with museums and galleries, the inevitability of faculty retirements, departures, and passings is a challenge for collection managers. The preservation and retrieval of archival field records and research is critical to the documentation of museum collections. Unfortunately, there are no expectations for faculty members to donate their personal papers to the museums which curate their collections. The potential to lose essential data, such as provenance information, stresses the importance of tackling these problems early. All too often, decisions about retention of these materials are made by uninformed academic departments or family heirs, and these decisions can be detrimental to the future value of museum collections. The best solution is to be proactive and work with the professor or researcher and academic departments before they are gone. The Harold C. and Jean M. Conklin Archives at the Yale Peabody Museum will be used as a case study to illustrate the efforts necessary by an institution to preserve vital supporting documentation to its collections. Conklin was a Professor of Anthropology at Yale, a Curator at the Peabody, and a researcher in the field of Southeast Asian studies for over six decades.