Panel Abstracts
Select a panel to view abstracts:
Panel I - Locating Southeast Asian Traffic: Regionalism, Maritime Trade Networks, and the Transformation of Port CommunitiesPanel II - Navigating Cities: Traffic Control and the Production of the City and its Others
Panel III - Circuits of Representation: Art, Colonialism, and the Culture Trade
Panel IV - Traffic, Power, and the State: Contemporary Cross-Border Flows
Panel I - Locating Southeast Asian Traffic: Regionalism, Maritime Trade Networks, and the Transformation of Port Communities
Naoko Iioka, National University of Singapore
"Siamese Crown and Chinese Agents: Shipping Between Siam and Japan During the late 17th and Early 18th Centuries"
This paper examines the role of the Chinese traders as shipping agents for the crown of Ayutthaya during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Ayutthaya was one of the principal commercial entrepots in Southeast Asia at that time. While the Siamese kings were the most prominent merchants in the country's foreign trade, the Japan trade was one of the important sources of income for the crown. However, it was the Chinese merchants who played crucial roles in Siamese trade with Japan from the late 1630s until the 1850s. Utilizing historical materials from Japan between 1680s and 1720s, this paper attempts to explore the collaboration between the Siamese crown and his Chinese agents and, thus, provide a better understanding of the role of the Chinese traders in Ayutthaya's commerce. In addition, this research also reviews Siamese crown trade with Japan within the recent debate over the “Age of Commerce” in mainland Southeast Asia.
Frank Dhont, Yale University
"Ruling the Trading Port of Malacca"
The paper will look at the rise and fall of Malacca under three different masters. Malay, Portuguese and early Dutch rule will each be scrutinized. The three powers all had different trade networks and different priorities. Malacca was only one city in these networks and its importance varied. This paper will focus on how the institutions and policies of Malaccan society were changed or maintained and implemented in the trading port of Malacca which remained a major centre of traffic in Southeast Asia before commencing a gradual decline.
The essay starts in the early fifteenth century and ends in the late seventeenth century. The specific focus is on what happened with the economic, social and political institutions and policies adopted by those three powers during their rule in Malacca as a port and city and how this influenced the city of Malacca as a centre of trade. Taking into account the changing role of Malacca as trading port in a larger empire the focus is not on the trading network itself but rather on how this one city changed through the years and on whether these changes were intensified by local forces from the port itself.
Clearly the point of view of Malays, Portuguese and Dutch in Malacca was different on the place of Malacca in a trading network. The questions raised are how did Malacca manage to become strong and what means did it use to that goal? What principal political, social and economic factors played and what changes occurred during the shift of rule from Malays to Portuguese and later to Dutch? In what sense was this a policy change inside Malacca itself? What impact did these policies have on Malacca as a city? In a context of changing times did the trading port of Malacca change totally or were the instruments and institutions of rule preserved or not?
Panel II - Navigating Cities: Traffic Control and the Production of the City and its Others
Erik Harms, Cornell University
"Of Streaks of Light and Stoplights: Saigon Traffic Regimes and the Street Politics of Chaos and Control"
A snapshot photo stops time, brings moving masses to a halt, and provides a cross section of the constituent parts of traffic. The snapshot captures a view which shows for a moment what makes up "the people" in an otherwise undifferentiated mass. But snapshots remain ephemeral, for the flow of traffic must move on; in real time the captured image always fades to a blur, continuing forward into the crowd of bodies and machines. Traffic, with its potential to make people both anonymous and visible, provides a space in which to be seen and in which to disappear. It works from the bottom up as a site of social escapism and from the top down as a space of social control. Looking at the blurred movement and the streaks of light of traffic flow as well as the crisp snapshot of traffic caught in time at the stoplight helps us understand the contemporary Vietnamese State's concern with what Nguyen-Vo Thu-Huong calls "governing the social". This paper shows how Saigon traffic regimes provide both a model for and a model of newly defined State concerns with everyday action, comportment, behavior, and in this case, the movement of bodies seated on imported machines as they navigate through local social spaces of power and control.
In other words, the idea of how one might "understand" traffic serves as an apt metaphor for contemporary ethnography. Ethnography must seek out ways to depict social action in the ways one might give a sense of traffic, as both a conglomeration of individual actions as well as a total system. It is a classic example of what Marx described as praxis in his critique of Feuerbach and vulgar materialism. That is, human action produces traffic; and traffic itself becomes a material constraint on action. In traffic, people follow their own roads, but not always under conditions of their own choosing. The concrete history of this dialectic can be demonstrated more clearly with traffic than with, say, "ritual revival" or "the family" but all of these must be viewed as both spontaneous (popular) and controlled (state regulated). So traffic can provide a key of what to look for in these other areas. We can see the involvement of the state as well as social and cultural idioms of group behavior; and most importantly, traffic provides an image of the meeting point between these two levels. From off the cuff comments between passing motorists, to exchanges with the police; from city planning, street clearance, surveillance and control, to anonymity and evasion, the multiple levels of social action that make up traffic help us identify what might constitute an adequate ethnography of other realms of social experience.
Caleb Kwong, University of Leeds
"An alternative human traffic pattern? – 'urban-rural migration in Indonesia"
The movement of people has been a central theme of development studies for a very long time. My study explores one type of human movement that is less common in the developing world – the movement of workers from the advanced to the backward regions within the same country.
In many case, such movement is organised by government in an attempt to reduce urban congestion and to increase agricultural productivity in rural areas. My study, however, focuses on movements initiated by the private sector. Large nationwide companies that have branches all over their countries often find imbalanced supply of workers across regions. On one hand, there is excessive supply of qualified workers in advanced regions (such as the capital and other large cities), owing to factors relating to “economy of scale”, such as high population density, well-established education system, and the influx of skilled labours from other regions. On the other hand, there is often an insufficient supply of workers in backward regions (such as villages in remote provinces), resulting from the relatively lack of skills and education of the workforce. As a result, some companies employ workers from advanced regions to fill in the supply gap in backward regions, which creates a unique form of small scale 'urban-rural' migration. However, workers themselves often find such kind of migration undesirable. Many are not used to the absence of their family and friends in the new workplace. Some have serious concern with the poor living condition, lack of amenities and social services, while others worry about the lack of marriage opportunity and unpromising future prospects for their children. Nevertheless, the poor economic situation in many developing countries means that they have no choice but to accept the offers. However, such mentality may lead to incentive and motivational problems, which may reduce the efficiency of companies' operations in these areas.
My study examines this issue based on a two-month fieldwork at the Bank Rakyat of Indonesia (BRI). BRI is the one of the largest banks in Indonesia with more than 3,000 branches all over the country. Although BRI aims to employ workers who live in proximity of their workplace, it is often impossible because of the shortage of qualified workforce in certain parts of the country. As a result, BRI has regularly employed workers from large cities such as Jakarta and Bogor, in order to fill up the vacancies in remote regions such as West Kalimantan and South Sumatra.
The objective of my study is to evaluate the impact of 'urban-rural' migration on BRI workers in three aspects. First of all, it analyses the impact of migration on their personal lives, such as their perception on the new environment and living conditions, their worries, their methods to maintain family ties and long-distance relationship, etc. Second, my study examines the impact of the migration on their work performance. It explores the extent to the lack of local knowledge which affects their daily operations, and to what extent does demoralisation reduce their work efficiency. Third, my study examines how BRI tackles the demoralisation problem through their human resource management policies. Precisely, my study reveals how the use of 'carrot and stick', such as promotion, bonus and other allowances, provides adequate incentives to offset the demoralising aspects of such movement.
Joanie McCollom, University of California at Santa Cruz
"Behind the Wheel: The Experience of Driving in Kuala Lumpur and Beyond"
This paper examines the specificity of driving in Kuala Lumpur and its environs to reveal the intimate connection between the forging of the national "geo-body" (Thongchai 1994) and the geography of global interconnections. To do so, this paper treats driving as epistemology—that is, as a way of knowing. It suggests that an understanding of the formation of national and global subjectivities would benefit from serious attention to driving as a practice of articulation of embodied knowledge and "modernity at large" (Appadurai 1996). The nation and the "global" are usually treated as separate or janus-faced formations fundamentally at odds with one another. This paper focuses on the mundane activity of driving to argue that national and global subjectivities are in fact mutually produced where such everyday practices operate within the disciplinary regime of the road.
The experience of being behind the wheel and negotiating the roadways has remained largely untheorized. Yet, driving produces a unique experience of modernity, one that deserves sustained attention. The tactility of driving—what we might call "the rhythm of the road"—is a product of modern disciplinary aesthetics involving repetition, spacing, and iconography, as well as a particular motion across space that provides unique perspectives (c.f. Tadiar 1993). Moreover, as a dreamspace of capitalism, the car and the road transform the driver into a consumer and a commodity vis-à-vis (among other things) billboard and radio advertisements, thereby producing an ambivalent space between subject and object.
Kuala Lumpur is a provocative place for grounding an analysis of driving by establishing links between the experience of driving and the production of both the nation and the global. In Malaysia, the tactility of driving informs narratives of national progress, which celebrate driving and encourages the elaboration of the national infrastructure. The highway system, under and along which runs a telecommunications network, connects Malaysia's major cities to each other and to major cities around the world, thereby transforming the geography of the nation as some places come to matter and others become marginalized "spaces on the side of the road" (Stewart 1996). This reconfiguration sparks newfound senses of place and global interconnection that affect transformations in the nation as an "imagined community" (Anderson 1991).
Panel III - Circuits of Representation: Art, Colonialism, and the Culture Trade
Yun-wen Sung, Cornell University
"Fluid Currency and the Objects of Contact: Lives of Chinese Coins in Bali"
Although maritime trade has traditionally been vital to the economy and social life of Southeast Asia, the full complexity of the “movement” or “traffic” that occurred in the region through this trade cannot easily be reduced to purely commercial aspects alone. For example, diverse contacts and a two-way traffic in commodities, artifacts, ideas as well as technology between Southeast Asia and China have made a strong case to demonstrate that commerce can be viewed as a vehicle of cultural exchange. Therefore, the “commodities” circulated in these two areas as well as the histories of movement associated with them are essential to the study of cross-cultural encounters.
For this presentation, I use an interdisciplinary approach (including anthropology, religious studies, gender studies, economic history, archaeology, and history of art) to study the social lives/cultural biographies of Chinese coins, which have circulated widely throughout Southeast Asia because of maritime trade since the seventh century. I examine the usage and the role of Chinese coins in Bali—a region that has had a long and involved Chinese influence—and explore how these coins have been transformed into art objects and sacred commodities used in various spheres of Balinese life. This project aims to make two related arguments. First, by studying the uses of Chinese coins through an interdisciplinary perspective, I argue that the dominant modern/Western notion of an art object (whose function is assumed to be aesthetic alone) is incapable of making sense of the “multiple lives” and fluid identities led by Southeast Asian art objects, located as they are in contexts where art plays a strong functional or performative role due to its “lived” nature in everyday life. Secondly, I employ this broader understanding of art to shed light upon the full complexity of the relationship between overseas Chinese and local Indonesians—a relationship that has been understood primarily in mercantile terms. I do so by focusing upon how Chinese copper coins were used as the means of both economic and cultural exchange between these two cultures and by demonstrating how the myriad uses of these coins—from traditional heirloom to tourist art—are all precise expressions of the indigenous Balinese response to (or strategic negotiation with) Chinese cultural influences.
Kiyoko Yamaguchi, Kyoto University
"New Space in the American-period Philippines: Negotiating with Changes and Expressing in Forms"
In the field of Philippine architectural history, bahay na bato (house of stone) represents the historical urban residence. In 1999, Vigan townscape (Ilocos Sur) was registered as World Heritage, owing to numerous bahay na batos of the Spanish period. Since then, old houses in other regional towns are also remarked as local legacy. Many poblaciónes (old town centers) are becoming famous through local newspaper and tourism promotions.
However, through the field survey in 36 poblaciónes in Cebu Province, majority of the “Hispanic población” structure—plaza, municipal halls, elementary schools, and most of the luxurious abodes— turned out to be the product of 1930's (late American-period).
What are the characteristics of the American-period house? What does the new house implicate on the locals' attitude toward new era? American-period house can be an individual style in Philippine architectural history. Perhaps owing to the positive reception of Spanish-period image, it is now under the title of “historical house” as an mere extension of bahay na bato. American-period house did inherit eye-catching details (such as sliding windows) from the bahay, but major scheme (such as floor plan, structure, wall sidings) actually have changed. Still, as a whole, the house does not belong to any of the American styles; it was a new creation.
The Cebuano mansions illustrate the relationship between Philippine design- and social history . Certain aspect of social- and lifestyle changes, caused directly by administrative change, was filtered and reflected on new residential design with a positive attitude. At the same time, the new house partially preceded and guided the new lifestyle. New space made the house owners to have “advanced” lifestyle; it was a physical separation from the old space and time.
Even though the lifestyle began converting from the beginning of the American era, construction of the new house articulated the creation of the “early 20C Filipinos”. Unlike in other fields (education, sanitary programs, public constructions, etc.), the new style was formed by the taste of the Filipino house owners, not directly following the American reforms or cultural programs. American-period style is not the last variation of “Hispanic población” structure nor the colonial remnant, but a social translation embracing local elite's self-projection during the ever-changing environment of the early 20C Philippines.
Jennifer Foley, Cornell University
"Angkor and the 'Law of the Jungle': Cultural Heritage Production and the Antiquities Trade in Cambodia from the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient to UNESCO"
In recent years, in the instability that has characterized the aftermath of the chaotic Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia has become a Southeast Asian trafficking epicenter. Women are trafficked within and into Cambodia, and sometimes out again, to feed the global sex trade, while illegal drugs make their way to Cambodia from the Golden Triangle and beyond, where they mingle on the docks of Sihanoukville with shipments of stolen cars, TVs, radios, computers and cell phones. While some of these forms of trafficking are relatively recent additions, one type of trafficking that began hundreds of years ago continues to keep its place on the list of illicit trading: the trade in sacred art objects. While documented instances of art looting can be found in Cambodia at least back to the twelfth century, the motivations and circumstances of incidents of looting have changed over time: art objects are usually no longer removed as war booty. Instead, incidents during the nearly hundred years since the province of Angkor was retroceded to Cambodia by the Siamese at the behest of their French “protectors” have included the filching of souvenirs by French colonial administrators; the bold escapades of one of France's best known writers that left the young novelist in jail, and the Banteay Srei temple short of half a dozen bas-reliefs; and the pillage of Banteay Chmar temple near the Thai border by remnants of the Khmer Rouge army to fund the continuation of the civil war.
This paper examines the changing global understanding and attitude toward the illicit trade in Cambodian antiquities. The study of this evolution begins with the creation of Indochinese regulations and classifications of protected monuments, and carries forward to the situation today, whereby numerous decrees, conventions and treaties have been signed and implemented in an effort to protect Cambodia's cultural heritage.
Edson Cabalfin, Cornell University
"Colonial Imaginings of Late 19th Century Philippine Architectures: The Architectural Photography of Dean C. Worcester as Modes of Transmitting Modernity and Colonialism"
The study is rooted on the premise that architectural photography is never neutral and innocent but, rather, is embedded within discourses of power, politics and ideology. This paper attempts to investigate architectural photographs as modes of transmitting ideas of modernity from the colonizer to the colonized.
The paper seeks to probe into architectural photography of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Philippines taken by Dean C. Worcester (who was part of the First Philippine Commission formed by U.S. President William McKinley in 1899) in terms of discourses of modernity, nationalism and colonialism. Specifically, it focuses on photographs published in Worcester's books “The Philippine Islands and their People” (published in 1898) and “The Philippines: Past and Present” (published in 1914), as well as unpublished photographs of the Worcester Photographic Collection at the University of Michigan.
The study poses the following questions: How did Worcester look at the architecture of the Philippines then? What was being represented architecturally in Worcester's photographs? How and why did Worcester use architecture as an object of study? How do the various conceptions of modernity and nationalism manifest in the architectural photographs?
Panel IV - Traffic, Power, and the State: Contemporary Cross-Border Flows
Judy Hemming, Australian National University
“Securitisation of Trafficking or/versus Security of the Trafficked?”
It is a known fact for many, that corruption facilitates the crossing of borders and secures whatever documents are needed. The scale of trafficking implicating Thailand as both a receiving and sending country is reported to be extremely high. For example, in recent months Thai women have been found working in Australia's sex industry and this has lead to Australia and Thai officials setting up a taskforce to hunt down traffickers and bring them to justice as well as 'protect and prevent' vulnerable women being caught in the insidious web of traffickers' false promises, corruptive and exploitative practices.
This paper will explore current research on human trafficking occurring in the Oceanic and Southeast Asian region. The focus will be the examination of existing immigration and national security policies of countries in this region and how trafficking is regarded and treated. There will be some discussion on the differing opinion between government and practitioners in their attitude toward 'what really is the problem'. The analytical framework for doing so will be the Copenhagen School's approach to security and securitization. It will also look at the resources that have become available for the education of the general populace, implementation of new legislation, training of personnel, the bringing to justice the offenders and the treatment of the 'victim'.
It is argued that there is a gap in the literature on trafficking which silences certain voices and this paper will be presenting this other voice, by way of a case study from empirical research conducted in Thailand. It will throw doubt on the assumption that all trafficked women are 'victims'. The story will shed a different light on some of the attitudes, opinions and writing of scholarly and journalistic claims that all women in the sex industry are at the merciless hands of wicked and greedy traffickers rather than being engaged in a rational decision making process.
Kevin Woods, Yale University
"Natural Resource Trafficking along the Burma – China Frontier"
Burma's unique geopolitical position and its rich endowment of natural resources present unique obstacles and opportunities for trafficking. Kachin State, Burma offers a cogent case study of trafficking goods, in this case natural resources such as gold, jade and timber, to its northern neighbor Yunnan, China. China is increasingly becoming economically and politically incorporated into mainland Southeast Asia through aggressive economic trade reforms, especially along its undeveloped, porous borders. However, a substantial illicit trade regime exists under the surface of the formal trade sector, which channels gems, drugs and timber from weak state, resource rich Burma to strong state, resource poor China. Ceasefire concessions in the early 1990s administered by the Burmese central government, funded by Chinese businessmen and brokered by Kachin officials created ad-hoc circumstances of control over natural resources and its subsequent traffic. Tentative Burmese government appropriation of the frontier following the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) ceasefire agreement in 1994 shifted the patron-client networks from (sub-)local to (trans-)national. The local networks inserted as national clients subsequently 'nationalized' the trafficked goods; and concomitantly altered the continuing Kachin insurgent economy in response to increasing Burmese government pressure. The historical trade relations between Yunnan and Kachin State, and its disruption by the British and Burmese, offers insight into the re-orientation of the insurgent economy in Kachin State after the ceasefire agreements. Understanding historical and current trade relations between Burma and China permit tracing the shift in political alliances operating commodity chain networks. This, in turn, may facilitate theorizing “violent environment/development” discourse, in addition to organizing an effective coordinated campaign to curtail the environmentally and socially debilitating trafficking of natural resources along the Burma-China border.
Kevin Coffey, Columbia University
"Networks of Local Empowerment: Learning from Hmong Cabbage Production in Northern Thailand"
The negative effects of agricultural commodification as well as the environmental problems associated with cabbage production have been a focus of previous research on Hmong cash crop production in Northern Thailand. While these studies highlight genuine concerns, this research project attempts to look at the successful aspects of cabbage production in hope that it can provide lessons for future development and conservation initiatives. A lowland Thai trader brought cabbage seed to the Hmong village of Mae Tho in the mid-1970s. Soon after its arrival, cabbage became the main cash crop in the village. The crop is still dominant in Mae Tho and has spread to Hmong and other hilltribe communities throughout Northern Thailand. This research attempts to identify key mechanisms that enabled the villagers of Mae Tho to maintain a viable income from cabbage production for almost 30 years. The history of this production and marketing system is one of constant change and modification. Through three decades of change, farmers and traders continued a determined effort to sustain a successful cabbage production and marketing network. Each new cropping season, farmers adapted to and took advantage of new opportunities that resulted from constant change in the social, economic, and ecological landscape. The study found that a) intra-community diversity, b) local experimentation, as well as c) the exchange of knowledge and technologies between farmers are key factors in the proliferation of cabbage in Northern Thailand.