235. RETHINKING POWER AND IDENTITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
235.
Panel Title : RETHINKING POWER AND IDENTITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Institution : National University of Singapore
Chair : Goh Beng Lan
Convener : Natasha Hamilton Hart
Discussant : Chua Beng Huat
Panel Abstract :
This panel explores some of the pertinent themes in the study of contemporary Southeast Asian societies. It brings together a variety of interdisciplinary approaches in looking at issues of power, societal formation, agency and globalisation and their inter-connections with the nation-state and its actors. Themes explored range from middle-class agency and politics, visual art and local history and international relations in Southeast Asia. The papers weave their analyses around the implicit presence of the nation-state as a source for the production and negotiation of identities and knowledge in the region.
Participants :
Goh Beng Lan
Paper Title : Rethinking Class, Nation and Agency in Malaysia
Abstract :
An imperative question in the study of middle class in Southeast Asia appears to be about how is their political agency possible despite their great entwinement with the State? Existing explanations have predominantly focused on the ability of the middle-class to carve out spaces outside/beyond the state as well as the nation. Using empirical evidence around the recent conflation of Islamic orthodoxy and citizenship concerns in Malaysia, this paper will argue that the Malaysian experience suggests that middle-class agency is inherently about the nation - but one which is decoupled from the state. Class and nation are not competing identities and the relationship between nationalism and the state is only historical but not teleological. The Malaysian experience suggests that future possibilities of the ethos of modern citizenship lie in both the danger as well as creativity of middle-class subjectivities.
Natasha Hamilton Hart
Paper Title : Knowing American Power in Southeast Asia
Anstract :
In most of Southeast Asia, criticism of the United States, if it appears at all, appears as a moral indulgence, generally to be set aside in favour of concrete economic and strategic interests. The foundational belief informing government policy and most elite opinion is that the U.S. plays an essential role in maintaining the security and prosperity of the region. While popular opinion is often strongly negative, opinion polls are very volatile and public attitudes have not translated into sustained political pressure to reverse longstanding policies of accommodation and support for American involvement in the region. The most common explanation for this echoes the arguments of both American neoconservatives and their ‘liberal' critics: American hegemony is fundamentally benign; and it serves the material interests of countries in Southeast Asia to accommodate it. This explanation is so close to having the status of an unassailable truth that it is rarely fully articulated. How does such knowledge come into being? This paper argues that the beliefs that underpin the region's accommodationist stance rest on particular ways of perceiving the regional environment and America's role in it.
Irving Chan Johnson
Paper Title : Uncle Choo runs up the coconut tree and other such stories: Visual art and
architecture in Kelantan's Thai Buddhist villages
Anstract :
Some fifty years ago Uncle Choo, a Thai Buddhist man from the village of Baan Tuwaa in Kelantan, Malaysia, decided to paint the wood rafters of a rest pavilion (saalaa) in the middle of the village's paddy field. He meticulously painted scenes from the life of the Buddha as well as of everyday village life, including one in which he shows himself fleeing up a coconut tree after being chased by a policeman for gambling at a cockfight. Built in 1948 with donations secured from villagers, the derelict pavilion contains one of the few remaining examples of traditional Kelantanese Thai mural art in the Malaysian state. In 2006, the chief abbot of Wat Klaang, a large temple in the village of Baan Klaang, a short distance from Uncle Choo's Baan Tuwaa, decided to have the murals on the ordination hall of his temple repainted. He insisted that the painters restore the murals to maintain their classical form albeit allowing the artist much leeway in his choice of colour. The hall today is a riot of shocking pinks, blues and yellows and has generated much talk in Baan Klaang.
