Where in the World is the Global Philippines?

The phrases “global Filipino,” “global Pinoy” (slang for Filipino), and the slightly more confounding “global Philippines” circulate widely in the Philippine mass media, thanks in no small part to the burgeoning of industries and services catering to the millions of Filipinos working and living abroad.  Drawing from fieldwork in the Philippines and elsewhere, this paper explores the purchase of an articulation like the “global Philippines” for rethinking such defining features and paradigms of Southeast Asian Studies as geographical boundedness, “localization,” etc. 

Global Wars, Local Warlords; America’s War on Terror and Private Armies in the Southern Philippines

The Philippines’ strategic importance was diminished after the end of the Cold War, culminating in the exodus of U.S. troops from permanent U.S. military bases on Luzon in 1991. After the 9/11 attacks, renewed interest in terrorism brought American special operations troops back in an 'advisory' role.   Their main focus has been the islands of Basilan and Jolo in the Sulu Archipelago—a region characterized by rebellion, an entrenched military institution, high levels of criminal activity as well as violent political confrontations between elite clan leaders.  This paper looks at inter-clan dynamics in Jolo, and more broadly in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), and how elite clan leaders have legitimized their monopoly on violence through the appropriation of the local security apparatus.  By allying themselves behind America's agenda of “anti-terrorism” and USAID-sponsored civic aid programs, local leaders have consolidated their political power at the expense of their rivals.  I examine why, despite the signing of a peace agreement with Muslim rebels and military victories against home-grown terrorist groups such as the Abu Sayyaf, armed violence continues unabated.

The Original People and the Native State:  Historicizing Contemporary Indigenous Rights Claims in Malaysia

Much of the indigenous movement literature, drawing on case studies from the Americas and Australia, analyze indigenous movements within a native-settler framework where the state traces its roots to the colonizers. However, this does not accurately describe the situation in Malaysia, and many countries in Southeast Asia, where the postcolonial state is derived from the colonized and is ideologically set up as the guardian of native rights. Indigenous movements in this region, too, struggle to fit within an international discourse and definition of indigenous mostly shaped by the experiences of indigenous activism in the Americas and Australia. In this paper, I examine the specificity of indigenous rights claims in Malaysia where the Orang Asli, the aboriginal people, are a marginalized minority, while the Malays who are the ruling majority also claim to be indigenous. I consider how the Orang Asli can claim indigenous rights when the state also claims to be native. I explore the historical contingencies that continue to shape contemporary rights struggles in this region.

Militarizing Space: Locating Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, Southeast Asia, or Elsewhere

Shortly after 1954 when Dien Bien Phu appeared on the world stage, C. Wright Mills critiqued a “military definition of reality,” or the everyday absorption of categories and ideas inspired by organized violence. By examining how to locate Dien Bien Phu geographically, I argue that Vietnam is as much a militarized spatial construct as Southeast Asia—if not even more so. Alternatively, one can locate the montane site and its peoples in the eastern Himalayan massif, or “Zomia.” Using this heuristic device to unsettle Dien Bien Phu’s location, I resituate the place in terms closer to local language and geography.

Performing the Cultural Wealth of Nations

Four questions motivate my presentation: 1) What do the works of Adam Smith, Pierre Bourdieu, Jeffrey Alexander, and Erving Goffman suggest about cultural wealth as a source of comparative advantage for nations or regions? 2) How is cultural wealth distributed globally and what accounts for inequalities in cultural endowments from one country or region to the next? 3) What accounts for its activation, its deactivation, and its transformation? And 4) what can we learn from Thailand’s cultural industries and from the cultural politics of its nation-state? This presentation will draw on the contributions made to The Cultural Wealth of Nations, a volume co-edited with Nina Bandelj. The volume is under review at Stanford University Press and supported by the Fund for the Advancement of the Disciplines, that is itself co-sponsored by the American Sociological Association and the National Science Foundation.

Culture, Leisure and Identity in Changing Times: Indonesian Chinese as Keepers of Traditional Performing Arts

This paper will discuss the intricate relations between culture and identity in a web of larger power structures of politics and the market by looking at the ways the Indonesian Chinese minority attach themselves to a local performing arts tradition.  I will examine as my study case the Wayang Orang amateur club called Ang Hien Hoo in Malang, East Java, which was popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and their struggle to survive in the present times.   In this paper I see this amateur club as a site, not only for cultural assimilation, but also as a meeting space for the diverse migrant Chinese population residing at a host country. The space is also used to negotiate their position as citizens responsible to promote local traditional performing arts.   The paper will examine how this amateur club was swept by the Cold War politics and national political turmoil of 1965, and how it fought to survive in the pressures of the global capitalist era.

Getting a Bargain? Some Lessons from a Toba Batak Marketplace

Some have suggested that an unregulated marketplace will adjust itself through the forces of a powerful leveling system, namely, supply and demand. Recent evidence from the current global economic downturn seems to indicate otherwise, forcing us to question whether there ever has been, or can be, a truly unfettered marketplace. Leaving the macroeconomic questions for the experts in that field, this paper will present ethnographic information about one exchange venue during a brief moment in time: the marketplace of touristic souvenirs on Samosir Island, Lake Toba, North Sumatra, Indonesia, circa 1995. I hope to show that this single example from Southeast Asia can help illuminate the unpredictable nature of globalizing marketplaces that resist formal economic modeling and confound the expectations and assumptions of both the "demanders" and the "suppliers."

The Intimate Economies of Bangkok

Countering modernization theory's expectation that capitalist development diminishes religion, in Thailand, it has intensified, but transformed, spiritual practice. This paper considers the prevalence of market shrines that propitiate sacralized figures from history, or from Hindu, folk, and Buddhist traditions. It considers how “prosperity religion” has decentered religious orthodoxy in the context of rapid boom and bust and explores how spiritual and market economies intersect in Bangkok's landscape.

Institutionalizing Human Rights in Southeast Asia

Promoting an ambitious form of political "regionalism" in Southeast Asia implies moving beyond shared tactical interests toward a greater sense of shared norms and identities. This has been difficult in a region that includes such diverse states and populations. Human rights lie at the crux of the challenge. For many years, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have struggled over the meaning and relative importance of human rights. "Negative rights" related to political dissent and freedom of expression have been particularly contentious. Under considerable external pressure, ASEAN included prominent references to fundamental political freedoms in its 2007 Charter and subsequently established an ASEAN Inter-Governmental Human Rights Commission (AICHR). In some respects, AICHR signifies an important step toward a more liberal formulation of Southeast Asian regional identity. However, the commission also reflects powerful counter-currents and embodies an effort to control and defuse pressure to strengthen human rights regimes. This paper will examine AICHR's political and institutional features, analyze its activities to date, and assess its prospects.

Is ASEAN’s Illiberal Peace a Stable Equilibrium?
ASEAN’s security community stands out because of its illiberal character. Unlike other regional associations, ASEAN can be usefully conceptualized as an “illiberal peace.” While it has avoided war among fellow members, it has also failed to curb authoritarianism within the association. However, in recent years, ASEAN appears to have moved in a more liberal direction.  It has adopted a charter with democratic norms, instituted human rights bodies, and been much more critical of Myanmar, the pariah in its midst. How significant are these changes? I will argue in this paper that while these changes are notable, they do not constitute a fundamental break from ASEAN’s illiberal peace because they do not provide enough institutional mechanisms to advance democratic change. Despite the unease of some members, illiberalism remains deeply ensconced within ASEAN and continues to undergird stability and non-violent forms of interaction and conflict resolution.

The New Nationalism in Southeast Asia: Its Causes, Functions, and Significance for Economic and Regional Collaboration
Nationalism is a powerful force in contemporary Southeast Asian politics, as observed in the rising or recurrent conflicts over the islands in the South China Sea, the border conflict between Cambodia and Thailand, and tensions filled with nationalistic sentiments between Indonesia and Singapore and Malaysia, and the anti-American sentiments in the Philippines and Indonesia. This paper will argue that the new nationalism in Southeast Asia is a combined result of the end of the Cold War, the democratizing trend in the region, and the rise of China economically and militarily. It will discuss the failure thus far of both economic liberalism (including freer trade) and regionalism (as manifest in ASEAN, APEC, and other regional organizations) in stemming this new nationalism.