Introduction - International Institute for Asian Studies

Bart Barendregt

Guest ed i tor

Do the performing arts play a role in sexual selection? Howdoes music influence mating practices in different cul-

tures? Can the performing arts create social settings wheresexual relationships germinate and grow – even where sex isa disruptive force, an arena for competition and conflict? Andif so, where does this power of the performing arts come from?

The performing arts everywhere play an important role inexpressing erotic feelings. Playing an instrument is often usedto attract the other sex, and the singing of amorous songsbetween young men and women is widespread in Asia.According to one colonial travelogue, skill and verbal abilityin poetry were a passport to female favour among the high-land Malays of Sumatra: ‘A kind of flirtation goes on inde-pendently of the open and public display of skill, and it is oftenaccompanied with the interchange of flowers and other mutesymbols which all have a mystical meaning’ (Malayan Mis-cellanies 1821). The highland Malays ascribed evocative pow-ers to lovers’ verses: in the past, when young men went trav-elling, they might give their beloved a piece of bamboo withan inscription, which the girl was to read aloud daily to ensurethe success of her lover’s venture and his faithful return toher.

This supposed magnetism of music is not unique. Similarseductive scenes abound in early travelogues, ranging fromthe courtesans of the celestial city Kin-Sai, famed from MarcoPolo’s descriptions, to later stories of Kyoto-Gion’s geishas wholured their customers with their three-stringed shamisen.Drawing upon notions of the seductive Asian woman, orien-

tal dancers such as Matahari and Little Egypt brought this artof seduction to the West. Many descriptions of such arts, ascritics like Edward Said, Rana Khabbani and Ashis Nandy haveshown, are based on misunderstandings, sometimes inten-tional and generally say more about the western audience’slonging for a sensual other expressed through a depiction ofthe East as a place of lust and sexual pleasures. As a result, theOrient has long been perceived through the seductive per-formances of its women, something that the journalist Sheri-dan Passo (2005) describes as the ‘Asian Mystique’. Given allthis, it is surprising how little is actually known about thesearts and the often intricate ways they lured and seduced theiraudiences.

Passions performed: is there an eroticcomponent to the arts?Seduction stands for different things in different places, butlittle attention has to date been paid to local conceptualisa-tions. Western dictionaries define seduction as an act of win-ning someone’s love or sexual favour, though seduction hasalso been interpreted more negatively as enticing someone tostray from the straight and narrow path. From the sirens ofGreek mythology, Indian celestial nymphs (apsara) whoseduced both gods and men, to the attractiveness of today’spop idols, special evocative powers are often attributed to thelovers’ song. Indeed, many believe there is something inher-ent in music that affects people.

What makes the human voice seductive and what defines asexy voice? Is a sexy voice a biological given or a play upon cul-tural expectations? Wim van der Meer (this issue, p.6) sug-

c o n t i n u e d o n p a g e 4 >

The changing art of seduction: ritual courtship, performing prostitutes, erotic entertainment

I IAS Newslet ter 40 | Spring 2006 | f ree of charge | publ ished by I IAS | P.O. Box 9515 | 2300 RA Leiden | The Nether lands | T +31-71 -527 2227 | F +31-71 -527 4162 | i ias@let . le idenuniv.n l | www.i ias .n l

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I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 4 0 | S p r i n g 2 0 0 62

IIAS values dynamism and versatility in its research programmes. Post-doctoral research fellows are tem-

porarily employed by or affiliated to IIAS, either within the framework of a collaborative research pro-

gramme or on an individual basis. In its aim to disseminate broad, in-depth knowledge of Asia, the insti-

tute organizes seminars, workshops and conferences, and publishes the IIAS Newsletter with a circulation

of 25,000.

IIAS runs a database for Asian Studies with information on researchers and research-related institutes

worldwide. As an international mediator and a clearing-house for knowledge and information, IIAS is

active in creating international networks and launching international cooperative projects and research

programmes. In this way, the institute functions as a window on Europe for non-European scholars

and contributes to the cultural rapprochement between Asia and Europe.

IIAS also administers the secretariat of the European Alliance for Asian Studies (Asia Alliance:

www.asia-alliance.org) and the Secretariat General of the International Convention of Asia Scholars

(ICAS: www.icassecretariat.org). Updates on the activities of the Asia Alliance and ICAS are published

in this newsletter. <

The International Institute for Asian Studies is a postdoctoral research centre based in Leiden and

Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Our main objective is to encourage the interdisciplinary and compara-

tive study of Asia and to promote national and international cooperation in the field. The institute

focuses on the humanities and social sciences and their interaction with other sciences.

Contents #40

Direc

tor’s

note

Confucius Inc.,Plato & Co.W ith its growing worldwide network of Confucius Institutes, China is catch-

ing up in the propagation of its culture and language. The Confucius Insti-tute Project, a non-profit organization administered by the Chinese Ministry of Edu-cation through the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language,intends to establish 100 Confucius Institutes around the world by 2010.

The project, named after the sage who encapsulates the ‘... longevity and profundi-ty of Chinese language and culture’, is a move by the Chinese government to accel-erate the integration of Chinese language and culture into the world of the 21st cen-tury. The worldwide franchise has its headquarters in Beijing, which supplies theoverall strategy, the image, the promotional material, and the ‘Great Wall Chinese’multimedia courseware.

Most recently founded Confucius Institutes are co-operative projects between themain office and an existing centre of Chinese learning, such as those at San Fran-cisco State University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Manchester,the Freie Universität Berlin and the Nanyang Technological Insti-tute. The strategy of engaging existing centres of Chineselearning will most likely work to their mutualadvantage, for funding, visibility and creatinglegitimacy. These institutes could emerge asfocal points within overseas Chinese net-works while offering Chinese studentsabroad the opportunity to work as teachers.In contrast to the open-minded pragmatismof the Chinese enterprise, the national Euro-pean institutions abroad such as the BritishCouncil, the Goethe-Institut and theAlliance Française seem like relics of the colo-nial past.

Will the fractious tribes of Europe collectivelymanage to inaugurate 100 Plato Institutesworldwide by the year 2010? <

Wim Stokhof

Director, IIAS

The art of seduction1, 4-5 Introduction / Bart Barendregt

6 The seductive voice / Wim van der Meer

7 Love songs and temple festivals in northwest China / Frank Kouwenhoven

8 Indian courtesans: from reality to the silver screen and back again / Jolanda

Djaimala Boejharat

9 Beauty of seduction in a Tokyo host club / Akiko Takeyama

10 The art of no-seduction: Muslim boy-band music in Southeast Asia and fear of the

female voice / Bart Barendregt

11 Dance floor politics in easternmost Java / Ben Arps

Research12 The Indonesian conundrum: entrenched corruption and failing reform /

Peter King

13 Corruption, collusion and nepotism after Suharto: Indonesia’s past or future? /

Richard Robison

14 The price of uncertainty: kampung land politics in post-Suharto Bandung /

Gustaaf Reerink

15 Land and authority: the state and the village in Pasir, East Kalimantan /

Laurens Bakker

16 Colonial rivalry and the partition of Timor / Hans Hägerdal

17 Living on the Line of Control: changing family and kinship networks in Devipur

Camp / Abha Chauhan

18 Contemporary Taiwanese women’s arts: curating a movement into art / Ming-Hui

Chen

19 The way of the world / Simon Wickham-Smith

Miss IIAS Newsletter Spring 2006

Reviews23 Books received

24 Islamic banking in Southeast Asia / Muhammed Hassanali

25 The Kyoto School, American empire and the post-white world / Kenn Nakata

Steffensen

26 In pursuit of inclusive democracy for a multi-ethnic state: Nepal at the crossroads

/ Alpo Ratia

27 Khmer identity: a religious perspective / Carolina Ivanescu

28 Dynamics of social inequality in Vietnam / Phuong An Nguyen

29 Piracy in Southeast Asia / Stefan Eklöf

International Institute for Asian Studies30 Pensioners on the move: social security and trans-border retirement migration in

Asia and Europe / Mika Toyota, Anita Böcker, Elspeth Guild

31 ICAS 5 in Kuala Lumpur

32 IIAS fellows

33 IIAS research

34-35 Announcements

36-37 International arts agenda / Carol Brash

38-39 International conference agenda

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wantedasian studies: hearts and minds

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IIAS Newsletter welcomes unsolicited contributions

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I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 4 0 | S p r i n g 2 0 0 6 3

> Letters

The future of Asian archaeology

Unrepresentative, pusillanimous & politically correct

The future of Asian archaeology at Leiden University was debated at the workshop ‘Current issues inthe archaeology of Asia’ following the first IIAS masterclass on this topic. I would like to re-empha-size some of my own observations from this meeting.

In my opinion, there are four main requirements for effective research on archaeology in Asia, in par-ticular in my own area of Southeast Asia. The first is an archaeology department able to provide thetraining and practical methodology necessary for field research. The second is access to modern facil-ities and specialist knowledge required to analyze archaeological material. The third is broad expert-ise in the history and material cultures of Asia as a whole. As early as 1937, J.C. van Leur argued thatIndonesian history could only be understood within a wider Asian context and this is also true forIndonesian archaeology, even for the earliest periods of prehistory. The last and rarest resource is acentre of learning for area languages and cultures. The decline Southeast Asian Studies was noted atan earlier seminar in Amsterdam. Terry King, summarising the present situation in the UK, notedthat the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies in Kent was closed in 1991 and the Department in Hullin 2002, leaving only London as a collective centre of learning in this area.

Despite the problems faced by university departments across Europe, it is notable that all four areasof expertise are present at Leiden University. With the gradual centralization of both Asian studiesand non-western archaeology, it is now the only institution in the Netherlands where in-depth researchis possible. For the study of Indonesian archaeology, the situation is even more serious, as much ofthe essential literature remains in Dutch and archival resources (such as the photographic archive ofthe Oudheidkundige Dienst) are available only in Leiden. The university is a centre of European impor-tance for Southeast Asian archaeology, and a unique centre of learning on Indonesia. Moreover, thestrength of both the Sinological and Indological departments makes the future potential for Asianarchaeology even greater.

Teaching remains integral to long-term research strategy. The four key speakers at the meeting – JohnMiksic, Pierre-Yves Manguin, Bion Griffin and Ian Glover – all supported PhD students as part oftheir archaeological programmes. This teaching and supervision is vital, and I do not believe long-term archaeological programmes can be maintained in Leiden without the continuity of teaching staffand faculty. Finally, I have constantly been impressed by the high quality of research in Asian archae-ology currently being undertaken by graduate and doctoral students in Leiden, and the long academictradition established here. To allow this tradition to be broken, notwithstanding the financial pres-sures now involved, would be, in my opinion, not only a loss, but a tragedy. <

William A. Southworth

Research fellow, IIAS

Dear Editors,

Your recent special issue on ‘the Asia-Pacific War 60 years on’ was seriously unrepresentative anddefective in its neglect of both Burma and Thailand. Of course, even these days, different though theyare, both are still treated all too often as non-countries. But Thailand (formerly mis-represented as‘Siam’) has a good claim to be considered the real Southeast Asia, as the one historic local polity nevercolonized, and therefore best able to develop according to its own needs. And Burma, no ‘imperialconstruct’ like many others in Asia, was perhaps the land least happy to be subordinated to westernrule, as indicated by its unique refusal on regaining its independence in 1948, to join the British Com-monwealth.

As I pointed out in a review article in the Cambridge Historical Journal as long ago as 1987, Thailandunfortunately but understandably indulged from 1944 in a ‘fudge’ of its earlier policies in order tolimit the postwar punitive Allied reaction to a minimum. And Burma can be considered to have donemuch the same in order to gain its independence. One thinks of General Slim’s comment to AungSan when at last, in May 1945, he marched his troops through the Japanese lines to join the Britishforces: ‘You only come to us because you see we are winning’.

For that matter, there is extensive evidence from right across Southeast and South Asia – Chandra Bosefor instance – of local support for the Japanese war against western colonial hegemony, up at least tothe point when the return of the western powers began to seem likely, and the locals could recognizethe need to make their peace with them. By the same token, as defeat began increasingly to stare themin the face, some Japanese began to treat local Southeast Asians in a much more repressive manner.This is something particularly well illustrated by Dr Ba Maw’s Breakthrough in Burma, written thoughit was, years later, primarily as a vindication of the Japanese, something still quite misrepresented bysuch as John Dower.

Fundamentally however, the native (as opposed to Overseas Chinese) view of the Far Eastern War dif-fered markedly from the Sino-Korean, and should have been given at least equal recognition in youressentially very ‘politically correct’ not to say pusillanimous coverage. Events at the time of the lateShowa tenno’s funeral would seem to indicate that pathological Japan-bashing still reigns particularlywidely in the Netherlands. <

N.J. Brailey

Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol

Fellowships at the International Institute for Asian Studies

Rubicon GrantsIIAS invites young and promising postdoctoral researchers to apply for Rubicon Grants at the Netherlands

Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for twelve months fellowships in the Netherlands.

Who can apply?

Postgraduates who are currently engaged in doctoral research or who have been awarded a doctorate in the

twelve months preceding the relevant deadline. Applicants who are still engaged in doctoral research may

only apply if their supervisor provides a written declaration approving their thesis.

The 2006 Rubicon application deadlines are 15 April, 15 September and 15 December.

IIAS offers Rubicon grantees affiliated fellowships in Leiden or Amsterdam. We also offer to mediate in

finding a suitable Dutch host university or research institution for Rubicon applicants conducting research

in Asian Studies. IIAS Rubicon fellows are offered office facilities, while the institute will assist in gaining

access to libraries, archives and other institutions in the Netherlands. Fellows are expected to be produc-

tive in writing, possibly give a lecture or organise a workshop, remain in contact with European researchers,

and make due reference to IIAS and NWO in (future) publications, (partly) made possible through research

done during your stay.

• For more information on IIAS fellowships

and the Rubicon Grant see the

IIAS website at: www.iias.nl

• For specific information on IIAS fellow-

ships, please contact Amis Boersma

or Wouter Feldberg at:

[email protected]

• For specific information on the Rubicon

Grants, please refer to [email protected]

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)


19thEuropeanConference onModern SouthAsian StudiesECMSAS is held every two years and is

one of the largest gatherings of South Asia

researchers in Europe, covering all fields from

the humanities and social sciences to

technology, the natural sciences and medicine.

www.easas.org

ECMSAS 2006 is organized by the

International Institute for Asian Studies

and the European Association

of South Asian Studies (EASAS)

To register for the conference, please

visit our website www.easas.org or write

us at [email protected].

Leiden, the Netherlands, 27-30 June 2006


> The art of seduction

gests that whereas visual factors in the mate-selection processare well-known, often studied and exploited in the arts, theseductive aural stimuli of the human voice should receiveequal attention. Van der Meer describes how Indian singerssuch as Kishori Amonkar and Lata Mageshkar might be seenas evolutionary ‘mutants’ mastering their voice in skilful andsubtle ways that deeply affect the listener.

Biological assets aside, much of the idea of what is seductiveseems to be culturally determined. Judith Lynne Hanna clear-ly summarises this idea in her 1988 book Dance, Sex and Gen-der: ‘Nonhuman animals’ drive to reproduce stimulates the

dramatic and colourful ritualized movement displays that arereferred to as “mating dances”. Similarly, the impulse fordance among humans may be reproductive, but it is mediat-ed by culture.’ Our response to sexual stimuli depends on ourattitudes, beliefs, and experiences. Is it the use of the dancer’seyes as she secretly flirts with her audience, her erotic move-ments, or the aphrodisiac scents she uses? Or perhaps hersoft, almost incidental touch when passing by, or the pleasingfoods and drinks she serves? Hanna comments on this, stat-ing that it is the overall bodily experience that explains whythe arts are so popularly seductive and why their performancebecomes a vehicle for Eros: both the arts and sexuality use thesame instrument – the human body.

The art of seduction traditionally plays upon all the sensessimultaneously and its study might not only gain from bio-logical or musicological perspectives, but from recent workon the anthropology of the senses. Veit Erlman’s (2004:3)Hearing Cultures observes that ours is essentially a visual age.Popular music is a good illustration of this, as image is oftenfavoured over sound. This can be seen in singing competi-tions like American Idol and its spinoffs. At the same time,the performing arts perpetuate sensual cultures and ‘lan-guages’ that convey things that in ordinary circumstanceswould be censored or create unease.

Risqué songs, fertility and the socialfunction of seductionYouth throughout upland Southeast Asia and among the manyminorities of southern China have traditionally exchangedrepartee songs in which male and female singing alternate.Primarily associated with agricultural rites, these songs wereoften sung while collecting in the forest or working the fields.Such courtship songs were part of village feasts or temple fes-tivals in Buddhist Southeast Asia: youths of neighbouring vil-lages were invited for a communal meal, dancing, and ques-tion-and-answer games during which candidate-lovers werequestioned. In the course of the night, screened from view,such songs easily became a battle of the sexes, and in somecases turned into sexual play.

Risqué songs with an overt double entendre, erotic puns andsexually implicit behaviour normally constrained by societycan, in one carnivalesque moment, become the norm. In hiscontribution Frank Kouwenhoven (p.7) describes such per-formances in northwest China: ‘flirting’ is directed ‘towardsthe gods, and there is a begging for life, for rain, for protec-tion of the crop, and for fertility of the women’. The lam klawnof northwest Thailand, the phia pha songs of the Hmong andthe hua’er songs described by Kouwenhoven all seem to pointto the importance of singing seductive songs in the selectionof marriage partners. In Southeast Asia such ritualisedcourtship songs were part of a wider set of entertainments,including cockfighting, couple dances, and riddling gamesmeant to express wit and sexuality.

Such song festivals were often fruitful arenas for contact –traditional dating agencies as it were – supervised by elder-ly persons experienced in such affairs, and with performersultimately proposing marriage to one another. In the moun-tains of northwest China, love affairs during these festivalsmight even result in extramarital children, a welcome gift towomen whose marriages had not been consummated. Fer-tility was the message of such festivals and an explicit themein the songs. Ritual courtship through the performing artstherefore contributed in important ways to the general wel-fare of society. The temporarily release and the free reign ofnormally suppressed ideas, however, are not restricted to theagrarian societies described here. Especially in Asia’s feudalpast, when the open expression of sexuality was quite con-strained, the arts seem to have been a welcome solution tothe expression of otherwise disallowed passions. Here onecan speak of a professional class of performers specialized

in the art of seduction, truly turning ritual courtship into aperformance.

Professional seduction: courtesans andperforming prostitutesIn many Asian societies courtesans were important promot-ers of the higher arts, teaching noble young men to appreci-ate poetry and music and initiating them in etiquette and cul-tural aesthetics. Their salons and teahouses were places wheremen were entertained and could discuss topics that otherwomen in society were hardly aware of.

It is important to point out that sexuality was often sublimat-ed and erotic play and flirting did not necessarily led to realsexual play. Those who misunderstood this often lumpedtogether all sorts of courtesans, depicting them uniformly asperforming prostitutes. Not all performers were paid for sex,and if they did engage in sex, it was often by choice, theirmusic and dance aiding their selection of a partner. In India,as Jolanda Boejharat describes (p.8), professional seductress-es ranged from vulgar harlots and cheap dancer-prostitutes tothe formerly highly-respected mujarewali. The last were pro-fessional performers, trained in music, dance and etiquette,who cleverly made and still make use of their audience’s expec-tations, performing seduction as seen through male eyes. Mid-dle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese treatises on love recognizedance as one of the amorous arts that a woman should culti-vate to please her lover (Hanna 1988: 56). Men, however, wrotemost of these treatises. In the case of mujarewali, choreogra-phers and dance teachers were also mainly men, who dictat-ed the way women should behave and move to depict seduc-tiveness. This ‘male gaze’, as Boejharat writes, later reappearsin many Bollywood movies devoted to courtesans: ‘Neverthe-less, if in the movies the male gaze determines much of theaction, in real life the courtesan knows how to play this malegaze to get what she wants.’

Male versus female gaze and the third sex as seducerIt is, however, not only female entertainers who seduce, asAkiko Takeyama shows in her contribution (p.9) on today’smale host clubs in Tokyo. To perform as seductive men, hostsstylise all aspects of their appearance and bodily movements tolive up to the fantasies of their female clients. According to onefemale informant: ‘I also perform as if I eagerly adored my hostso as to heighten the romantic mood and feeling of intimacy.In that way, he treats me even more specially.’ Performed seduc-tion or performance as seduction – the boundaries tend to blur,but what they have in common is that once sensual fantasiestake over, people are easily persuaded into other things, in thiscase ordering another bottle of expensive liquor, which will gal-lantly be brought to the table by the male host.

In many Asian societies the third sex was thought to have qual-ities that enabled them to seduce in ways that ordinary malesor females could never manage. In Indonesian theatre, trans-vestites often personify fantasies of the other sex, using sexu-al parody and erotic gestures that ordinary people would notget away with. Another example of performing transvestitesis the Indian community of self-confessed eunuchs known ashijra. Most hijra specialize in song and dance and act in sexu-ally provocative ways, dancing in public, using coarse and abu-sive speech and gestures, and lifting their skirts to exposemutilated genitals when their authenticity is challenged

> c o n t i n u e d f r o m p a g e 1

Geisha playing

the zither

Michael Maslan Historic

Photographs / Corbis

is a sexy voice a biological given or a play upon cultural expectations?

Tokyo’s Kabukichm,

the world’s largest

red light district

Courtesy of Matt Abar

web-cam courtesans and new mobile media are fertile ground for today’s arts of seduction



(Hanna 1988:108). Like other hermaphrodite performers, thehijra reflect an ancient Asian ideal of a combination of maleand female into a single whole.

In Thailand, male to female transgender is generally accept-ed by society; kathoey gay or effeminate men are sometimeshard to tell apart from women. To pay for an often-desired sur-gery, kathoey work in cabarets or bars where they draw inter-national tourist audiences. While associated with prostitution,such performances also work to affirm one’s gender, as seduc-ing a male audience emphasizes the kathoey’s role of beautyqueen – a good example of how a further ‘professionalisation’of the art of seduction is taking place in some of Asia’s enter-tainment centres. One can here think of Thai go-go girl barsin Bangkok, the performative aspects of the Bakla gay beautypageants in the Philippines, or the many karaoke bars withsinging prostitutes found in Asia’s cosmopolitan centres.

Ancient taboos and new moral reveille: the fear of seductionAs the contributions that follow make clear, many of these artsof seduction have been influenced by the forces of moderni-ty. In much of Southeast Asia courtship songs have disap-peared, mainly due to the modernization of agriculture andthe substitution of hired workers and machines for commu-nal labour. As communal work dwindled, the context for repar-tee songs disappeared; they are now seldom exchanged, evenat harvest festivities. Some genres survive as paid perform-ances and have been recorded; courtship songs out of contexthave often become overtly associated with prostitution. Anoth-er threat to the musical art of seduction is the rise of a newsensorial ideology that privileges the visual, with the art ofseduction experiencing the same fate as many other traditionalarts: the lack of an interested audience able to understandthem. Often the arts of seduction are discredited as being asso-ciated with the lower senses, especially with unfettered femalesensuality. The arts of seduction have been cleaned up, de-eroticised and reinvented to bring them in line with the nation-al narratives of Asia’s post-colonial societies, or have other-wise been brought into conformity with a new moral climatefuelled by competition over the interpretation of religion.

My own description of nasyid – Islamic boy-band music inSoutheast Asia (p.10) – seems to be the antithesis to manyof the arts discussed thus far, as it is seemingly the art of no-seduction. Especially in religious contexts, seduction hasmore often than not been negatively valued and equated withsin and immorality. With their moral behaviour, clean-cutappearance and lyrics that stress there is no love other thanGod’s, nasyid bands seem to have little in common with theirwestern counterparts. At the same time, the moral messagesconveyed seem to be yet another form of the persuasion thatmusic is so well-known for. The success of this Islamic popmusic has thus far led to only a few female pop groups:Islamic hardliners fear the perils of the female voice, inwhich the fear of seduction is a key argument. The trans-formation of the art of seduction, however, is due not only

to changing norms or a new moral climate, but also to newways of mediating it.

The art of seduction (re-)mediatedExotic dance has become yet another trendy pastime for west-ern housewives desiring to seduce their husbands. Over theweb one can acquire CDs such as Erotic Dance Rhythm, Aphro-disia or Kama Sutra Special, the latter promising an explorationof the soulfulness of India by 25 musicians through an ele-gant interpretation of the ancient text: ‘Lovers will enjoydozens of rare, authentic native instruments which blend Indi-an and raga traditions and bring the Indian flavor of the KamaSutra alive!’ The art of seduction is back, re-mediated in newand often unexpected forms. Such new appearances are notunproblematic. In his contribution on the gandrung ofBanyuwangi, east Java, Bernard Arps (p.11) shows how today’serotic singer-dancer is mediated by video CD recordings andradio broadcasts, but is also found in Banyuwangi’s publicspaces. Arps takes the analysis of seduction in the arts furtherby pointing to its political utility for local power holders. Theresult is a decontextualized and sanitized gandrung, but impor-tantly, she remains a seducer.

The introduction of new grassroots media and inexpensiveinformation technologies have led to mass seduction on anunimagined scale, as illustrated by two recent media hypes.In Indonesia the influx of cheap Video CD (VCD) technologyhas done much to change the existing media landscape. Oneof the unforeseen effects has been a resurgence of porno-graphic imagery – ranging from student-made amateurmovies to a VCD containing a sexually explicit recording of alive dance performance in a Balinese village called joged bum-bung (often translated as ‘porno dance’). The popular dangdutsinger Inul, however, is a better example of what the modernday art of seduction can bring us. Inul Daratista, from Pasu-ruan, east Java, then 24 years old, taught gymnastics beforebecoming a pop singer. She had been popular for some timeamong lower social strata when the illegal distribution of anamateur VCD showing her erotic up and downward move-ments suddenly rocketed her to nation-wide fame in 2001.Her dance-style was soon compared to that of a drill, givingher the title of Ratu Ngebor, Queen of Drill Dance. Ever since,Indonesians have been divided into pro or contra Inul camps.In a similar way, Furong Jiejie, or Hibiscus Sister, recently shotto fame when seductively-posed photographs were posted onthe bulletin boards of two of China’s most prestigious uni-versity campuses. Hibiscus Sister (or Lotus Flower as sheprefers), in an interview with the South China Morning Post onthe media ban of her weblog, laughed at the idea of being athreat to officialdom – ‘I just wanted to dance, and sing andwrite heartfelt, meaningful prose.’ This example makes clearhow otherwise familiar strategies for seduction have foundnew space on the internet.

Websites for dating agencies, web-cam courtesans and newmobile media have proven fertile ground for today’s arts ofseduction. All the same, there are considerable continuities

as witnessed in ritual courting poetry published in SMS man-uals for mobile phone users in the Philippines, China andIndonesia. In many Indonesian cultures it was common tohave lovers’ verses written on bark cloth or bamboo to be recit-ed at special occasions. Similar ready-made constructions, toimprovise on and forward to others, are in use today – poemsfor different moods and occasions and sexually-implicit jokesand erotic puns not so different from the ones traditionallyused in courtship songs.

The elderly nostalgically remember the Malay repartee songs,as they recount how they first approached their belovedthrough song, and how she responded by adding to it. Nowa-days mass-mediated versions of such poetry exist, dissemi-nated via cassettes, radio broadcasts, and at modern versionsof village feasts. Courtesans are now a popular topic for manyAsian movies, from Ai Nu (Confessions Of A Chinese Cour-tesan, 1972), the much-acclaimed Rouge (1987) and Hais-hanghua (Flowers of Shanghai, 1998) to the Bollywood cour-tesan movies described here by Boejharat. These films providemodern audiences with glimpses of the sensorial regime thatthe art of seduction once was, thus positing a counter-mod-ernist historical consciousness. How much it will contributeto our understanding of the ways seduction works through artremains a question. Early in 2006, the sensual Orient and itsfemale performers once again stand in the limelight in theBroadway-style rendering of Arthur Golden’s 1997 novel Mem-oirs of a Geisha (2006). L’Oreal beauty queen Gong Li and otherseductive faces are teaming up with cosmetics giant Max Fac-tor and its advertising campaign to lure new audiences to thetheatres. Seduction is truly of all ages, and the arts have inmany cases been its main advocate. <

References

- Erlman, Veit. 2004. Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening and

Modernity, edited by Veit Erlman. Oxford: Berg.

- Hanna, Judith Lynne. 1988. Dance, Sex and Gender: Signs of Identity,

Dominance, Defiance, and Desire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

- Malayan Miscellanies vol II. 1822. Bencoolen: Sumatran Mission

Press.

- Passo, Sheridan. 2005. The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha

Girls & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient. New York: Public Affairs.

Bart Barendregt lectures in the Anthropology Department of Leiden

University, and is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of South-

east Asian Studies at the same university. Barendregt was the former

chair of the Bake Society for Ethnomusicology.

[email protected]

exotic dance has become yet another trendy pastimefor western housewives desiring to seduce their

husbands

the third sex was thought to have qualities enablingthem to seduce in ways ordinary males or females

could never manage

Kathoey cabaret in Bangkok : the third sex performing seduction

Wikipedia

Gandrung Temu, Kemiren village, east Java, 2001

Ben Arps

Tiffany's cabaret show in Pattaya, Thailand

Wong Ying Wuen

Many of the essays collected in this issue’s theme build

upon contributions to the ‘Music and the Art of Seduction’

conference, which brought an international group of musi-

cologists, social scientists, scholars of literature and biolo-

gists to Amsterdam in May 2005. The conference was organ-

ised by the Bake Society for Ethnomusicology and the

Department of Music Studies of the University of Amster-

dam. For more information please see the website of the

Bake Society: www.abake.nl. Frank Kouwenhoven and Wim

van der Meer are presently editing a book on Music and the

Art of Seduction in various cultures worldwide, which will

contain some of the contributions to the Amsterdam Con-

ference.



Charles Darwin had no doubts about the origins of music – it was a kind of mating call, a primitive language of the emotions froman early stage of evolution. While his ideas about music and evolution have often been alluded to, Darwin never really paid muchattention to music. His contemporary Herbert Spencer, who was much more conversant with music, saw it differently – music hadevolved from language, in particular speech laden with emotion.

The seductive voice

Wim van der Meer

D iscussion on the origins of music and its evolutionarysignificance has regained momentum over the past

decade and a half. Nils Wallin, Ian Cross, Steven Mithen andBjörn Merker are among those who have given impetus to thisfield of research referred to as biomusicology. Others opposethe idea of music as important to evolution. Steven Pinker, forinstance, considers music a useless, though pleasant, side-product of language that could just as well be eliminated fromhuman existence.

A different kind of criticism comes from cultural scientists,who generally don’t have any affinity with evolutionism.Classical musicologists, for instance, point out that evolu-tionary theories are of little or no use in explaining the devel-opment of European art music from the Middle Ages to thepresent era. Cultural products take on such diverse formsthat it is difficult to explain their existence through evolu-tionary processes. It is often unclear what the ‘gain’ of a cul-tural product could be, and why it would enhance chancesfor survival.

Mating calls?Examples of the apparently inexplicable forms that musicalexpression can take come from tribes that have hardly beenin contact with modern society like the Suyá and the Kamayuráof the Amazon, the Venda of Southern Africa and the Kaluliof Papua. The Indians of the Amazon devote much time tomusic, about four hours per day – approximately as much asthey devote to subsistence activities. The Amazon Indiansspeak little, certainly compared to their music making activi-ties. There are many types and layers of music with pivotalfunctions in social life; they do not use the binary oppositionbetween music and speech, but instead have many more cat-egories of speech-music.

One of the most interesting forms is akia, in which all the menof the village sing at the same time in the village square. Thesinging, however, is completely individual, without coherencebetween the individual singers – every man tries to presenthis own song as best he can. The evolutionist would immedi-ately interpret this as a mating call. But the remarkable thingis that the akia style of singing is not meant to seduce lassesof the village but to please their sisters. What appeared to bea classical example of sexual selection turned out to have acompletely different meaning. The reality of contemporarypeoples living in tribal societies obviously cannot serve as evi-dence for evolutionary processes that took place in the past.They can, however, provide insights into the role that musicplays in diverse cultures. And although the akia genre is nota mating call, we cannot deny the importance of music amongthe Amazon tribes.

The psychology of sexualityCrossing half the globe to India, we are again struck by theextraordinary importance of music, in particular, singing.Music pervades all layers of society and is present in innu-merable settings – work, religion, entertainment, social events.We know only the names of great singers; instrumentalistsaccompany anonymously. In art music, instrumentalists haveconquered their own space and we all know the names of RaviShankar and Zakir Hussain. Even so, instrumental music inIndia is considered a copy of singing. This is hardly surpris-ing as singing is the most prominent form of music in numer-ous cultures around the world, including western culture –and certainly in popular music, where instrumentalists playa lesser role.

The icons of popular music earn more than just a living. Theirgenes are in demand. Of course this is not the only reason whyhordes of virgins wanted to be fertilized by Elvis or the Beat-les. Similarly, Madonna, Shakira, Britney and JLo may be themost desirable sex symbols of our times. But is this really dueto the seductive quality of their voice? For those uninterestedin pop music (including many classical musicologists) theanswer is self-evident – pop music is trivial and the sensuali-

ty of its video-clips a cheap marketing strategy. Still, switch offthe sound and see what happens.

The first scientific study of the psychology of sexuality byHenry Havelock Ellis, published between 1897 and 1910, con-sidered the visual stimuli of sexual attraction more importantthan the auditory. Ellis gave some importance to the voice asa secondary sexual characteristic, especially the changing malevoice around the time of reaching sexual maturity. Researchershave probably underestimated the importance of the voice, inparticular the singing voice. From literature and mythologywe are familiar with the idea that voices can seduce, some-times with disastrous consequences, like the sirens of ancientGreece. Recent research has shown that voices tell us a lotabout the speaker. Susan Hughes, for instance, demonstrat-ed that the waist to hip ratio (WHR – a marker of femininity)and the shoulder to hip ratio (SHR – a masculinity indicator)can be deduced from the voice.

In a group of young people, the one who picks up a guitar andsings a couple of songs can exert considerable attraction onthe opposite sex. This has been construed to be a demonstra-tion of self-confidence, as insecurity resonates in the voice.Perhaps so, but a singer with a voice trembling with nervous-ness can also have success. It would seem that the very ideaof showing one’s emotions through the voice is what matters.Otherwise we cannot explain why singing is so important.

Indian courtesan singingIn India there used to be a professional class of women, oftencalled courtesans, who elevated seduction to an art. Through-out India’s history we come across texts that describe the artof the temptress in great detail, in which mastery of the artsand the psychology of bewitching male admirers were crucial.Courtesans were not prostitutes or call girls; they were intel-lectual and artistic partners. Such partnerships could last foryears and were sometimes exclusive, in that a courtesan wouldnot take on several lovers at the same time.

A process of attraction and seduction preceded the amorousrelation. The courtesan maintained a salon where she receivedinfluential and affluent men. During such soirées courtesanswould receive lavish gifts – golden coins, jewels and other valu-ables. Dance played an important role in the art of thetemptress – enticing body postures, sultry glances and trans-parent dress were her instruments. The most famous courte-sans, however, were the singers. Their repertoire was roman-

tic and the texts always had something to do with love. Buttheir greatest asset was their voice. The best singers were (andare) capable of captivating their audience with magicalmagnetism.

In my personal contact with some of the great women singersof India, I have been struck by how powerful the voice can be.It is enough for them to barely utter a few sounds and one can-not escape the attraction. It is some indefinable quality of thevoice, openness of the sound, and an earthy sensuality. Ofcourse this is not limited to Indian courtesans. I also have greatmemories of Maria Callas (whom I have never heard live –how much more powerful that might have been) in Norma,but everyone may have his or her own experience of deep emo-tion with song. And men can do it as well as women.

For many musicologists this is almost taboo. Western musi-cology in the 19th century went so far as to suggest that vocalmusic with its powerful emotions was an inferior expression,and that ‘pure’ or ‘absolute’ music should be instrumental.The voice in western classical music has as a consequencebeen reduced to an instrument. It is also taboo because we arenot supposed to break the magic spell. Musicologists studythe broad structure of music, but rarely the ‘superficial’ detailsof presentation. As a result, little research is done on this phe-nomenon and we hardly have a notion about the qualities ina voice that make it so powerful.

Rare mutations: Lata Mangeshkar andKishori AmonkarIn the Indian context we can say something about this. First,the voice has to be open – a nasal sound won’t do. Second, thevoice must be tuneful. Very few singers can handle these twodifficult tasks. But the most important is the most difficult:conveying emotion directly with the voice. This requires anextremely subtle interplay of timing, intonation, timbre andvolume control by which some singers reach out directly tothe heart and soul of the listener. In India there is no doubtthat ‘music without emotion is no music at all’ – singers whoare able to transmit emotion in the most powerful way are con-sidered the top.

In societies such as India there is stiff competition, differingmarkedly from the situation among the Suyá with its 400members. The competition is stiffer yet in popular music. Assuch, the phenomena of Lata Mangeshkar and KishoriAmonkar are extremely interesting in the light of evolutionand music. In over half a century Lata has recorded tens ofthousands of songs. She has a very high-pitched and etherealvoice that western commentators have mistakenly describedas de-sexualized; her songs convey erotic meanings that thefilms cannot show. The expression of emotion is not just anintuitive or subconscious process; in conversation Kishoriexplains how every detail and subtlety is important and howfull control of every movement of the voice is essential. What this is about is a stupendous musical consciousness.What is true for Kishori can also be said of Lata – that she is able to transmit emotion with extraordinary pre-cision and stir the soul of the public.

What is the evolutionary meaning of such rare ‘mutations’?That courtesans can exercise attraction on powerful men doesnot in itself represent an evolutionary gain as the offspringdid not inherit the father’s wealth. Nor is it clear whether popmusicians’ special status and fame would improve the genepool of humanity. Still, an enormous communal interest isserved by the phenomenon of stardom: on the one hand, itreflects and confirms the social order in which excellence andelitism are central; on the other hand, these musicians re-ori-ent us in the world of emotional experiences that we are all apart of. <

Wim van der Meer is a scholar and performer of Hindustani music.

His publications include Hindustani Music in the Twentieth Century

(1980). Presently he teaches at the Department of Musicology,

University of Amsterdam.

[email protected]

Gauhar Jan

(1873-1930), the most

famous courtesan-

singer of India

Sarbari Roy Choudhuri



In the mountains of northwest China, crowds of people gather at remote temples every summer. The normally grim and desertedlandscape becomes a backdrop for elaborate feasting, chanting and sacrificing. While the mood is festive, the meetings take place ina region which has seen centuries of violent conflict between Muslims and Buddhists, Han-Chinese and Tibetans. Inter-ethnicrelationships remain uneasy, but during the temple festivals people from different backgrounds accept the challenge of competingwith one another on a very different kind of battlefield: that of love.

Love songs and temple festivalsin northwest China

Frank Kouwenhoven

The rough and high-pitched seduc-tive chants of northwest China,

known as hua’er (flower songs) orshaonian (youth songs) are famous allover China. One needs to hear themonly once to remember them: the pierc-ing falsetto sounds and whirling orna-ments immediately strike the ear. ManyChinese know the name of a mountainof near-mythical fame, Lianhuashan,where some 40,000 pilgrims meet tosing, pray and flirt every summer. Theoutdoor gatherings in southern Gansuand eastern Qinghai are usually carni-valesque, with people indulging freelyin outdoor life, drinking, singing, andflirting.

In China, extramarital courtship andyouthful love affairs are normally viewedas licentious, but the rural temple festi-vals take place under the approving eyeof the gods. Lianhuashan and other out-door areas (at a safe distance from thecivilized world of the villages) are tem-porarily turned into sacred arenas: for afew days, people are allowed to fall inlove with strangers and to give vent totheir feelings in public. In the nearbytemples, elderly people sacrifice food,money and other gifts to divine ances-tors. A straw effigy of a spirit is drownedin one of the local rivers to fend off evilspirits.

These acts are aimed at preventing ret-ribution from gods and ghosts. Religionin China, no less than in Christian cul-ture, blooms and flourishes in the faceof sin. But there is an intriguing practi-cal side to the musical courting: furtivelove affairs during festivals sometimesresult in the birth of extramarital chil-dren, a welcome gift to women whosemarriages have not been consummated.

FertilitySurely, the teasing songs of northwestChina are great entertainment, but theyhave other functions as well. From ourfieldwork begun in 1997, we infer thatintimate relationships which arise fromhua’er are mostly extra-marital – areindeed expected to take place betweenpeople who already have marital part-ners. Women who get pregnant at a tem-ple fair can incorporate the baby intotheir existing marriage without ques-tions about the father’s identity. Obvi-ously no such ‘cover-up’ is available inthe case of unmarried women, who areformally expected to refrain fromsinging at (or going to) festivals.

In reality, hua’er are sung by people ofall ages, and the stakes are high foreveryone who joins. Aged people maynot sing for sex – although their flashyrepartee often hints at sublimated pas-sion – but their performances still takeplace under the eye of large crowds of

people. Moreover, no matter how spirit-ed the songs may sound, the backdropto this tradition is dark, connected tomore than teasing, flirting or havingchildren.

The areas of rural Gansu and Qinghaiwhere hua’er thrive are mostly barrenand dry. People have lived here for hun-dreds of years to a disheartening rhythmof floods and droughts, famines andwarfare, with death an over-familiar vis-itor. In this context hua’er not only func-tion as major distractions or platformsfor furtive sexual encounters, but aspowerful tools in the struggle for godlyfavours. Hua’er tunes are sometimessung in temples to pray for offspring, tobeg for the curing of illnesses or pend-ing death. In such cases, the applied for-mulae and metaphors may still derivefrom love songs, but the poems changedirection when sung in temples: pas-sionate imploring or ‘flirting’ is nowdirected towards the gods, begging forlife, for rain, for protection of the crop,for fertility of the women. Temples havebeen erected in honour of Hua’er niang-niang, the goddess of Hua’er and fertili-ty; some are adorned with visions ofyoung children sprawling on mountainflanks.

While the musical flirting does notresult in sexual contact for most singers,it can still be viewed as a form of sexualeducation. Umbrellas are carried aroundto provide shelter against the afternoonheat, but also, if necessary, to hide one’sembarrassment if song lyrics becometoo bold.

Wild atmosphereNumerous taboos rest on the singing ofhua’er, but during festivals most restric-

tions are temporarily lifted under theprotective care of the gods. Married menoften do not want their wives to partici-pate in the temple festivals and mayattempt to stop them from going. But formany Chinese women, festivals are theonly outlets they have, rare occasions tomeet kindred spirits and let off steamafter long periods of domestic seclusion. As a festival proceeds, the atmospherecan become quite wild. Within the tem-ple walls, women are sometimes seen todance, to fall into trance or to behave intheatrical fashion, as we witnessed insome festivals. The singing of hua’eroutside the temples is a natural contin-uation of this process of self-release andthe lifting of normal social restraints.

Han Chinese in cities like Lanzhou orXining are mostly unaware of the exis-tence of these festivals and react in dis-belief or even indignation when con-

fronted with the rural practices. Officialgovernment attitudes towards ethnicityand rural religion show similar uneasi-ness. Most Chinese academic researchon hua’er underplays or ignores the rolesof sex and religion. Temple festivals areoften referred to as ‘hua’er festivals’ andthe singing is described as entertain-ment. Ethnic diversity among thesingers is acknowledged, but is inter-preted mainly as a sign of China’s grow-ing unification: don’t these minoritiesmix happily with Han, isn’t their singingof hua’er in Chinese evidence of theiracceptance of Han Chinese superiority?With such a bland approach to hua’er,

many aspects of the tradition are mis-interpreted or overlooked. What does itactually mean for people to sing lovesongs together if they belong to ethni-cally different (and still hostile) groups?Where do hua’er originally come from?How do hua’er work in the context ofIslam, with its suppression of women?How does the process of musical court-ing in hua’er actually unfold? Is there an‘erotic’ component in the music? Canone ‘hear’ and ‘see’ courtship in action?These are the questions we address inour fieldwork.

Ethnic groups atLianhuashanWith its steep rock cliffs (some reachingup to 3,800 m) and forested flankswhich host numerous temples, Lian-huashan, or ‘Lotus Mountain’, attractstens of thousands of visitors every year.Throngs climb to the (multiple) tops of

Lianhuashan every summer to burnincense at sacred sites. Many aretourists. The more traditional visitors tothe festival include singers, beggars,monks, soothsayers, mendicant Daoistpriests, jugglers, blind musicians, ped-dlers, dancing madmen, instant come-dians, gamblers and the occasionaltransvestite.

The mountain and the surroundingregion were originally Tibetan (pas-toralists’ and farmers’) territory. Theinflux of Han-Chinese from the 14thcentury onwards reached new heightsin the 16th century, and the Tibetanswere gradually pushed out of the area.At this time the impact of Han-ChineseBuddhism altered the face of Lian-huashan. In addition to a small numberof Daoist temples which Chinese wor-shippers had already built in pre-Mingtimes, hundreds of new templesappeared on the mountain. Not far fromLianhuashan, a wall was built to sepa-rate Tibetan from Han-Chinese com-munities. Eventually Chinese restric-tions on the mobility of Tibetans werelifted, and the wall fell to ruins.

Tibetans have maintained a strong pres-ence at Lianhuashan. The entire area isa baffling hodge-podge of different cul-tures, not only Tibetans. Many groupsare ‘sinified’, meaning that they canspeak Chinese, or have even adopted itas their first language. The Dongxiang,a Muslim people of Mongolian descent,live in one of the driest and poorestmountain landscapes of Gansu, justsouth of Lanzhou. Hui, Bao’an, Salar,and various Mongguor groups occupyother territories, which they usuallyshare with local Han. All these groups

meet in the hua’er arena. Their tunesand lyrics are partly similar, suggestinginter-cultural contact over a long periodof time. But hua’er are not a monolithicgenre; many different (differently root-ed) local festival and courtship traditionsmust have merged in the course of his-tory. Remnants of local traditionsremain in many places, and need to bestudied on their own terms.

Courtship in actionOne fine summer day in 2003, wedescend a spacious valley as impressiveas the Grand Canyon. From time totime, there are mine explosions onopposite mountain flanks: they are seenfirst, in the shape of silent puffs of whiteclouds, and then heard, since sounds aredelayed for several seconds. A long andcolourful procession of tiny figureswalks down the trail leading to the tem-ple. Many people have travelled for daysto get here. Old women walk with diffi-culty, on bound feet, or ride on donkeys.Young girls are dressed colourfully, inpink, red or light blue jackets. Near thetemple, the human stream splits: theelderly enter the temple, the rest moveto an open space where the hua’ersinging takes place. Girls take the leadand sing the first songs. The men at firstseem reluctant to join in. They prefer toshout pop songs in defiance of the hua’ergame, and bum around at the foot of themountain with their hands in theirpockets. Yet after a while they shylybegin to sing some replies. One youngmale singer – with cheeks as red as alobster – shields his face from femaleglances with a big parasol. But singersrarely look at each other. All communi-cation takes place via sound. After awhile, the hills and cliffs resound withsong, in a splendid chaos of voices. Thelyrics are rife with erotic hints andstrange metaphors:

I put the horsewhip / on the bookcase in the templeI pull my sweetheart towards meAnd feed her mouth with my tongue

The power of hua’er as a protectiveshield against natural disasters anddeath, and their usage as a public vehi-cle for illicit passions and wild outingssecures the public’s fascination with thisculture. Ultimately, the songs are musi-cal laughter in the face of adversity – abold laughter that celebrates love, defiesdeath, and challenges the gods torespond. <

Frank Kouwenhoven and his partner

Antoinet Schimmelpenninck have been

collecting folk songs in China since 1986. In

1990 they initiated CHIME, the European

Foundation for Chinese Music Research

(http://home.wxs.nl/~chime). Kouwenhoven

is the editor of a forthcoming book on music

and seduction in different cultures.

[email protected]

Singing under a parasol, in a typical hua’er posture, with one’s hand raised near one’s ear.

CHIME archive

for a few days, people are allowed to fall in love with strangers



Nighttime. The shimmering air is filled with the scent of sweet perfume as the dim figures of visitors are seen in the shadows.Inside, the room is hung with draperies and chandeliers. Velvet cushions litter the floor while customers lie back, perhaps smokinga water pipe, listening to the sweet voices of the mujarewali. Women sing, mostly seated, subtly moving their bodies as the gracefulgestures of their hands and suggestive looks from beneath their veils cast a spell on the male audience. Sometimes eyes meet andwordless messages are sent. Their outcome is easy to guess....

Jo landa Dja imala Boe jharat

Ask any Indian about courtesans andthe answer is something like the

picture drawn above. Dancing girls havelong been a part of India; courtesanswere already mentioned in Vedic times(1000 B.C.). Over the centuries therehave been all sorts of prostitutes, fromsimple whores who provided sexualservices (vesya) to temple dancers whoto a certain extent prostituted them-selves (devadasi) to highly-respectedcourtesans (mujarewali, mujara-per-former) educated in the arts of amuse-ment. Traditionally, a mujara was a per-formance by a courtesan (mujarewali)before an audience, where sheexpressed herself through music, danceand poetry as well as painting and con-versation. Although this tradition hadits heyday about 200 years earlier, it con-tinued to be popular until the early 20thcentury.

People today speak nostalgically aboutthe golden age of courtesans, when theircompany was much appreciated and anaccepted part of aristocratic life. Never-theless, the current practice of this

seductive art as found in today’s broth-els (kotha) is despised, while its practi-tioners are considered outcasts operat-ing on the margins of society. Of coursethere is great variety in India’s red-lightdistricts: from child prostitutes to callgirls in modern city bars and womenwho still use the mujarewali tradition ofdancing and singing as part of theirseductive technique. Their daily livesand their nighttime practices place them

in a twilight zone, serving a male clien-tele without regard to caste or religion.Some artists and researchers say thattraditional mujarewali no longer exist, asthe artistic expressions of today’s cour-tesans are in no way comparable tothose of bygone days. Still, althoughtheir techniques have changed, thesewomen perform the arts of seduction,and their customers visit them not onlyfor their public services, but to return toan earlier time, to leave behind the caresof today and of the future.

Safedabad 2005In Safedabad, on the outskirts of Luc-know, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, is agroup of women still referred to asmujarewali. Safedabad is a very small vil-lage located on the busy road connect-ing Lucknow and Barabanki. At themain crossing is a small compoundlocally called Bagica (lit. garden) hous-ing about 30 dancing girls, together withsome family members and musicians.

Situated near the busy highway, theircustomers vary from truck drivers, pas-sengers, and villagers to high-rankingVIPs including government ministersand their entourage whose identities areprotected by the dark and remoteness ofthe place.

The clients come to the Bagica to enjoya mujara, but outside the compound thegirls perform at bachelor parties, fairsand festivals, using microphones andsometimes mime-singing to Bollywoodtunes. Their dancing is a poor imitationof Bollywood dancing style, with hip andshoulder movements being the mostimportant dancing techniques: someperform striptease as part of their act.

Courtesan movies andbrothel scenesThe Bollywood film industry, with 900releases annually, is among the largestin the world. Many film producers’works feature both historical courtesansand their present-day representatives.The first Indian feature film, a silent reli-gious movie entitled Raja Harischandra,was produced in 1913 by KhundirajPhalke. The introduction of sound in the1930s gave birth to a tradition of filmsfeaturing embedded music and dancesequences. Of these, the courtesangenre includes such well-known exam-ples as DevDas (1955) Pakeeza (1971) andUmrao Jan (1981).

Early courtesan films idealized the beau-ty and artistic skills of the historicalmujarewali and portrayed prostitutesrestored to social respectability throughmarriage. The narratives were inter-spersed with song and dance sequencessimilar to what we assume to have beentraditional mujara practice. This style ofperformance began as a blend of thekathak dance genre and the thumrisinging style, both part of classical NorthIndian dance and music traditions. Ini-tially the performer was seated whilesinging, and used seductive hand move-ments and facial expressions to illustratethe poetry. Used coincidentally at first,these expressive techniques gainedimportance over time; the dancer latercame to perform standing up. Actress-es in these early films often came from

the brothel culture – they were alreadytrained in singing and dancing, andbecause they were public women, mat-ters such as family honour or in-lawswere unimportant.

Although these movies are about theseductive arts and lives of courtesans,the heroes are the men who save them.These films, then, are largely the prod-uct of the male fantasies of Indian filmproducers. Even the choreographers anddance teachers (as was the custom in thewhole of India) were mostly men, whodictated how women should behave andmove to depict seductiveness. This was‘the male gaze’, a term introduced byfeminist film theorist Laura Mulvey inher 1975 article ‘Visual Pleasure andNarrative Cinema’. According to Mulvey,in a patriarchal society the pleasure oflooking is split between the active/maleand the passive/female. Nevertheless, ifin the movies the male gaze determinesmuch of the action, in real life the cour-tesan knows how to play this male gazeto get what she wants.

Another trend involves movies about callgirls and forced prostitutes, such asMandi (1983) and Chameli (2003). Thesefilms portray the harsh realities ofwomen working in the flesh trade, show-ing how they ended up in brothels, theagonies they endure, and the inescapa-bility of their fate. Most Bollywoodmovies include a bar scene. In a scene inBunty aur Babli (2005), we find ourselvesin a very chic club, with famous filmmujaras as background music. Then,without any relation to the story, thenewly-released song Kajara re is stagedand the audience is treated to the suddenappearance of Bollywood beauty queenAishwarya Rai dancing in the mujarastyle. This combination allows choreog-raphers to showcase their ability to com-bine modern Bollywood dancing and oldmujara techniques. It also givesscriptwriters the opportunity to introduceanother world into which decent peopleare not supposed to enter and wherewomen are no part of the audience. Inthis way the anonymity of the cinemahall allows a kind of erotic voyeurism: asthe adage has it, contrasting worlds meetover the body of a prostitute.

Safedabad: changing art ofseductionTimes have changed for the mujarewaliof Safedabad and their arts of seduction.The traditional way of singing a thumriis nearly forgotten. The older ones, whoby now usually act as procurers, stillremember some of the original reper-toire, but even they are starting to forgetthe words or confuse the tune (raga).Their technical ability to cope with thedifficult rhythms is also almost gone.Dance techniques have changed as well– only the sound of the ankle bells andthe pirouettes remind us of the formerkathak-based style. When asked why the

old techniques have not been preserved,they answer: ‘Why should we? Timeshave changed. Before, our clients werelearned people who knew how to appre-ciate the classical arts. But now ourclients are very common men who nolonger know how to enjoy those things.So what is the use?’

Many of the songs performed today orig-inate from courtesan movies; the reper-toire includes ghazals, mujara hits, andgeneral film songs. The young girlsdream of being discovered and becom-ing Bollywood stars; they take theirinspiration from Bollywood movies andenjoy imitating Bollywood hip andshoulder movements. The incorporationof these movements into their repertoirecreates a circle where representationbecomes source for the original.

So what are these seductive techniques?When the women dance they move onlycertain parts of their bodies, as if a cam-era is zooming in on the belly or thebosom, disregarding the movements ofthe rest of the body. The conveyance ofmood – as relayed through the actress’performance or the dancer’s completeinvolvement – is absent. The mujarewalisubmits to the customers’ gaze, as if sheherself is no longer part of the interac-tion. Her eyes are empty and no roman-tic or sensual looks are exchanged – adefense mechanism, perhaps, by whichthe women are able to mentally detachthemselves from the actual scene.

What is left is the typical way of per-forming a mujara seated, in a one-to-onesetting, physically very close to the cus-tomer. The mujarewali still give one thefeeling that they are singing and mov-ing their body just for you. No matterwhat she looks like or whatever thesound of her voice, at that moment youfeel transported to centuries past. Andthat is the true art of seduction. <

Jolanda Boejharat is an Indologist and inde-

pendent dance scholar. She and her students

perform in both bharata natyam as well as

kathak style. At present she is working on a

dissertation on the mujerawali of Safedabad.

[email protected]

Indian courtesans: from reality to the silver screen and back again

Courtesan of Lucknow. ca.1880

Patnaik, Naveen. 1985. A Second Paradise: Indian Courtley Life 1590-1947. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Cassette with disco mujara songs

TIPS Cassettes Records Co.

worlds meet over the body of a prostitute



‘I just want to be thought of as special’, says a mildly intoxicated woman in her late 20s as she is taped for an NTV special onTokyo’s host clubs. Her face fuzzed out for privacy, she leans toward her male host and looks at him, perhaps with shy, yet impish,eyes. The host returns her gaze with an ambiguous smile. Maybe he likes her....

Beauty of seduction in a Tokyo host club

Akiko Takeyama

I t is hard to tell. As they interact, the camera slowly pullsback, bringing imported liquor bottles into view and then,

gradually, the glittering interior of the host club – gold-coloredchandeliers, red carpet, green leather sofas, and countlessother multicolored objects in the cluttered, mirrored space.The video cuts to a group of hosts hoisting glasses of DomPerignon and quickly downing them. As they cheer, the cam-era closes in on a wad of Japanese yen that a female client haspulled out of her brown Louis Vuitton purse to pay for herevening’s entertainment. The narration begins, undramati-cally: ‘Alcohol, money, and the game of romance are inter-mingled in host clubs...’ For NTV, it’s yet another prime-timeshow in the can about host clubs. But for Japanese viewers,the seemingly endless fascination with handsome hosts andtheir free-spending clients knows no bottom.

Not long ago, host clubs were virtually unheard of in Japan, andfar less known about than geisha culture. Concentrated mediaexposure in the last decade, however, has cleared the air of themystery that surrounded the business since the first host clubopened in Tokyo in 1966. Host clubs are now flourishing despiteJapan’s overall weak economy. To find out how and why womenspend tens of thousands – in some cases millions – of yen anight, I recently spent a year researching host clubs in Tokyo.

Fantasy and everyday lifeThe host club Fantasy, where I conducted most of my field-work, is located in Tokyo’s Kabuki-cho, the biggest sex districtin Asia. Female clients – students, housewives, office work-ers and business owners – visit the club in the relatively earlyhours, while hostesses and sex workers stop by late at nightafter work. Most of them go to the club to escape from dailystress and have fun. They also enjoy a form of intimacy fos-tered through the game of romance, which I term ‘commod-ified’ romance. Once they fall in love with hosts for fun or forreal, they come back to the club repeatedly and spend moneyon their hosts. Yuki, a 46-year-old housewife of a companyowner and mother of three who visited the club for a year, says,‘I guess women visit host clubs to enjoy the kind of romanticexcitement (tokimeki) that rarely happens in everyday life. Inthe club, they can meet the self who is in love with youngattractive hosts who are beautifully radiant.’

On the other hand, their male host counterparts, who typical-ly have minimal education and working-class job experience,make every effort to satisfy these women in order to receive tan-gible return – money. According to hosts, the host club affordsan opportunity to become an overnight millionaire, to enjoy an‘upper-class’ lifestyle and the ‘respectful’ attention of society.For example, Yoshi, a 24-year-old host and high school dropout,says, ‘I wanted money for a ‘better life’ – living in a nicer place,eating gourmet food, and wearing expensive watches. I quit myconstruction work to become a host, who, I imagined, wouldreceive cash and expensive gifts from women while merelydrinking alcohol and flirting with them!’

As Yoshi and Yuki exemplify, that which is missing in day-to-day life turns into a seductive object whether it is tangible orimagined. In short, fantasy embeds in, and derives from, every-day social life, and is therefore gendered and class-distinctive. Money and the opportunity for romantic excitement attractsworking-class men and romance-seeking women. The hostclub thus becomes their meeting place. A 32-year-old veteranhost, Ryu, says: ‘Hosts can only seduce women who are will-ingly seduced, for whatever reason. Women who are not inter-ested in [romance] are not seduced no matter what we do.’Yuki correspondingly says, ‘[In host clubs], I also perform asif I eagerly adored my host so as to heighten the romanticmood and feeling of intimacy. In that way, he [my host] treatsme even more specially and in turn, I feel better.’

Subtle yet calculatedTo perform as seductive men, hosts stylize their appearanceand bodily movements. They wear expensive brand suits andwatches coordinated to enhance their slim bodies, salon-tanned skin, and perfectly set medium-long hair. Attention todetail extends to their fingertips. Ryu applies a nail topcoat

every two weeks and on occasion goes to a nail salon. He doesso because, he says, ‘Hands are one of the few body partsexposed and women like clean and beautiful (kireina) ones.’Hosts’ smooth hands aestheticize their body movements andby extension the whole scene. When a female client reachesfor a cigarette, for instance, a host smoothly flips open hislighter and provides a light before she has time to put it in hermouth. When she is about to stand up, he swiftly scoops hishand up to give symbolic support. These unrealistic per-formances not only draw women’s attention to his hands, butalso render the entire scene phantasmic. The hosts’ seductiveperformance is effectively played out in subtle yet highly cal-culated ways.

Let me now invite the reader to a host club scene. Amid thealcohol-fueled revelry, the dim and lively atmosphere in thehost club shortens the distance between a 25-year-old host,Koji, and his client, a 31-year-old mother and part-time work-er, Megumi. Koji and Megumi, who have known each otherfor three months, are trying to have a conversation and alter-nately whisper in each other’s ear to cut through the noise ofthe club. Every whisper causes a burst of laughter betweenthem. Their intimate interaction excludes all other people,including ‘helper’ hosts at the table, and creates their own inti-mate world. The moment, however, is ephemeral, and Kojileaves the table once the brief conversation is over. Megumiwaits for Koji to return, and in the long and awful wait, Koji’sseductiveness is greatly amplified.

Megumi unconsciously looks around, even though other hoststry to entertain her. Seeing Koji, she abruptly asks, ‘Why does-n’t he come back?’ A helper host replies, ‘Well, the womanover there opened a new bottle.’ Megumi says, ‘Why don’t Iorder champagne?’ She knows that ordering a more expen-sive bottle will bring Koji back. Indeed, Koji hurries back andgives her almost excessive attention. He cheerfully says, ‘So,you feel like drinking tonight, don’t you? Let’s enjoy ourselves!’Megumi maintains a glum silence and gives a sulky look. Kojilooks at her and says innocently, ‘Oh no! The sulky look ruinsyour beautiful face!’ He gently grabs her cheeks and pulls themoutward ‘See, this is my favorite smiling face of Megumi,’ hesays to everyone at the table. ‘Isn’t she pretty?’ ‘You didn’t haveto come back!’ Megumi says. Koji teasingly responds with,‘Oh, are you jealous?’ and then seriously adds, ‘You are somuch younger and prettier! Look at these juicy thighs!’ Megu-mi finally makes a bashful smile when Koji says, ‘To drinkwith Megumi is after all the best (ichiban)!’

Megumi’s seemingly self-contradictory attitude – attemptingto draw Koji’s attention but not quite accepting it – has theeffect of intensifying Koji’s attention. The performed ambiva-lence that implies her mixed feelings of jealousy, sulk, andgladness maximizes what she wants. Her tactic, however, isnot completely autonomous. In my interview with Koji, heexplained that he carefully calculates how to move from onetable to another in order to give the impression he is very pop-ular. Popularity, according to Koji, compels women to com-pete with one another for his attention. In this way, ‘I can killtwo birds with one stone: satisfying both my own and myclients’ desires,’ he says. Indeed, on that night, Megumi paidover 110,000 yen (roughly 1,000 US dollars) and left the clubsatisfied.

Presenting the seductive selfKoji contends that Megumi is manipulated to spend moremoney on him because of his skill at seduction. To an extentthis is true, but his view of himself as an aggrandizer – themasculine narrative of the active seducer and capable indi-vidual – is only part of the story. Koji diminishes the fact thathe also has been seduced by Megumi’s economic capital,which in her case is performative, enough to invest himself inher. Even so, several women I have interviewed have empha-sized that it is their personalities rather than their economicpower that enables a ‘noncommercial’ relationship with theirhosts. Sachiko, a 46-year-old widow, for example, visited theclub once a week for two years to see her host and describedher relationship with him. ‘Our relationship is not based onmoney, but trust. He trusts me and opens his mind to me.’

Like Koji and Sachiko, hosts and their clients attempt to pres-ent themselves as capable and/or attractive selves worthy ofreceiving money and noncommercial attention respectively.For its part, seduction is a dialectical process, in which one’sdesire evolves. Desire to attain money and attention, as Kojiand Sachiko exemplify, metonymically orients itself to the cre-ation of the ‘capable’ and/or ‘attractive’ self in a very genderedway. The dialectical process enables two individuals who havedifferent social backgrounds and desires to collaborate andfulfill each other as long as mutual satisfaction – even if it isasymmetric – is maintained.

Thus, seduction in the host club is not just about seducing theother but also about the presentation of the seductive and there-fore valuable self. Such ambivalence is rooted in the mirrorimage that seduction reflects: one simultaneously seduces, andis also seduced by the other. This reflex allows both host andclient to use seduction to feel good about the self and at thesame time enjoy the intoxication of being seduced. Theambivalence is, I argue, the beauty of seduction that poetical-ly evokes sensuous, affective, and visceral pleasure, while leav-ing room for multiple interpretations, all with a pleasant after-taste. <

Note:

All names, including that of the host club, are pseudonyms.

Akiko Takeyama is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her ethnographic

research was funded by the Japan Foundation doctoral fellowship.

She is currently writing her doctoral dissertation and has recently

contributed a chapter to the book Genders, Sexualities and Transgenders

in Japan (Routledge, 2005).

A host club billboard

on the street in

Kabukichm

photo by William Steele

(c)2006 Stuart Isett/

www.isett.com



Religion, more often than not, equates the arts of seduction – whether in traditional performances or popular music– with immoral behaviour. The status of music and dance in the Islamic world, especially the fear of its sensuouspowers, has been heatedly discussed in religious treatises; with its clean-cut performers and moral messages,nasyid, the Islamic boy-band music of Southeast Asia, seems to epitomise the art of no-seduction. Reality, however,is more complex, as Muslim pop music struggles to combine two competing powers – the eroticism of pop musicand the persuasive power of religion. And especially when the female voice comes into play....

The art of no-seduction: Muslim boy-band music in Southeast Asia and the fear of the female voice

Bart Barendregt

One of the most significant developments in present daySoutheast Asia is the rise of an Indonesian-Malay Mus-

lim middle class. With its own social aspirations, this groupfuels what might be termed Islamic chic – a cosmopolitanlifestyle characterised by new media and consumerism, Mus-lim fashion labels, popular ‘tele-evangelists’ such as AA Gym,and a range of lifestyle magazines that affirm that it is hip andmodern to be a Muslim.

Nasyid is the musical component of this emergent civil Islam(see also Barendregt 2006). The term nasyid comes from theArabic word annasyid, which means ‘(singer of a) religioussong’. In Southeast Asia today it stands for an a-cappella songgenre that mainly uses vocal harmonies and is predominant-ly performed by male vocalists. Not surprisingly, performersof nasyid trace the genre to the Middle East, especially to theverse thola’al badru ‘alaina (finally the moon has arisen amidstus), which many Muslims think was sung when the ProphetMuhammad first arrived in Medina.

Malaysian students studying in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jor-dan were probably the first to bring home nasyid cassettes, andby the late 1980s the genre had become popular in Malaysia.From there it spread to neighbouring countries with Muslimpopulations: Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, and especiallyIndonesia. Practitioners of nasyid are found in religiousschools (pesantren) and mosques, secondary schools and uni-versities, where it is used to propagate ‘Campus Islam’, anoften radical mix of student activism, youth culture and reli-gion. Many trace nasyid’s popularity to its accessibility: sungin Malay rather than Arabic, nasyid touches on not just reli-gious issues, but social ones as well.

Between the persuasive power of religion andthe eroticism of popInspired by the international boy-band craze of the late 1990s,nasyid is a perfect showcase for the issues that confront today’syounger Muslim generation. Groups like Indonesia’s S’nadaor Malaysia’s Raihan and Rabbani have gained superstar sta-tus, performing regularly on radio, television and MTV. Todaynasyid is one of the best-selling genres of the local recordingindustry and one of the few that could potentially go interna-tional – some groups already having performed for Muslimaudiences in the West and the Middle East. Nasyid’s very suc-cess, however, might prove to be one of its main challenges,due to tension between innovation and nasyid’s status as avehicle for moral teaching.

Some nasyid artists have recently begun to experiment withcrossovers such as hip-hop, R&B and break beat, and to col-laborate with renowned rock artists. Others like Izzatul Islamrefuse to experiment with newer forms of nasyid and insistthat the religious message must be primary; they therefore donot use musical instruments other than the hand-held frame-drum or Malay kompang. As Muslim musicians and musiclovers grapple with two competing powers – the eroticism ofpop music and the persuasive power of religion – the crucialquestion remains: At what point does religion end and theeroticism of pop take over?

Artists and fans recognise the religious restrictions on the usesof the performing arts by Muslims, and among them there islively discussion about the form that nasyid should ideally take.Indeed, there is a long-standing discourse in Islamic law aboutthe permissibility of music and singing, which has recentlybeen summarised by Van Nieuwkerk (1998). Islamic law clas-sifies music into three categories: the commendable recita-tion of the Koran; the singing of work or wedding songs, which

is neither discouraged nor encouraged (makroh); and ‘sensu-ous music that is performed in association with condemnedactivities, or that is thought to incite such prohibited practicesas consumption of drugs and alcohol, lust, prostitution etc.’(Al-Faruqi 1985: 1-13 as quoted by Van Nieuwkerk). This dis-course includes many, varied positions and has been more orless stringent in different times and places; discussion on what‘pure’ or authentic Islamic music should sound like contin-ues unabated.

Meanwhile, a new style of Islamic popular culture is develop-ing which in many respects follows western manifestationsof popular culture. Many regard nasyid’s success as inspiredby western boy-bands like Boys II Men and the Back StreetBoys – their style, singing techniques, and even lyrics. One ofthe most controversial aspects of this new style of Islamic pop-ular culture is the greater focus on visuals, nowhere better cap-tured than in the recent critique of the Festival Nasyid Indone-sia, a song contest modelled on the programme American Idol,which first took place in 2004. The festival, shown on nation-al television during Ramadan, led to fierce debate amongnasyid enthusiasts, many of whom condemned the show’s bla-tant commercialism. Like their western equivalents, youngnasyid singers are often worshiped by largely female audiences.

Fear of the female voice?What about Muslim equivalents to female pop singers in theWest? Siti Nurhaliza seems to many Malaysians to embody theperfect blend of western fashion and distinctive Malaysianflavour. Siti is often seen as an icon of the New Malay, one whocan uphold cultural and religious traditions and still be pro-gressive. But while Siti is Muslim, she is not a Muslim artist.She is able to cleverly switch between the two personas, whichallows her to get away with it. A similar strategy is used by oneof Malaysia’s latest nasyid sensations, the 25-year-old Waheeda,whose mini-album Wassini sold 20,000 copies in 2003; a fullalbum followed in 2005. Some attribute Waheeda’s success toher odd mix of pseudo-Arab songs, her wearing a veil and hercute but sexy on-stage persona. Waheeda herself (like Siti)denies singing nasyid songs, defining what she does as worldmusic (muzik dunia) with Asian and Middle Eastern influences.

Malaysia is home to some well-known female nasyid groupssuch as HAWA (Eve), Huda and Solehah, who also performearlier variants of Islamic pop like qasidah moderen. Femalegroups, however, are the exception. Similarly, Indonesia hasonly a few female nasyid groups (munsyid akhwat), the Jakar-

ta ensemble Bestari and Bandung-based Dawai Hati being themost prominent. During nasyid competitions there are sepa-rate contests for male and female performers and, with theexception of children’s nasyid choirs, mixed ensembles areclearly taboo.

Why? Because controlling women’s behaviour – especially thefear of westernised women – has long been a central tenet ofIslamic society. The sociologist Göle (2002) explains that ten-sions arise from the need of public Islam ‘to redefine and recre-ate the borders of the interior, intimate, and illicit gendered space(mahrem).’ Public visibility is an issue that has long remainedunaddressed in Muslim thinking; new ideas here easily breakwith tradition. To outsiders, moreover, such dialogues result inironic contradictions, like those of recent discussions on thefashionability of headscarves or ‘jilbab sexy’ in Indonesia.

Many aspects of nasyid music present us with a similar mix ofcontemporary gender reinterpretations, highlighting bothchanging ideas about gender relations in Southeast Asia andthe tensions this brings to an otherwise modern musicalgenre. Thus, when the female nasyid group Bestari’s firstalbum was released in 1996, it met with considerable resist-ance. Islamic magazines refused to advertise it and evenwomen were reported to boycott their cassettes. Since then,the situation appears to have become more relaxed, but mun-syid akhwat remain hotly debated. Conservatives continue toemphasise the taboo on women singing in public, claimingthat the female voice is part of the aurat, the parts of the bodythat must be concealed.

Why are the powers of the female voice so feared? A summa-ry of the discourse can be found in Van Nieuwkerk’s work(1998), which explains why female performances are so con-troversial. Women are often seen as the weaker sex in need ofprotection from male desire; this power balance could bereversed were women to seduce men. As Hirschkind (2004)has recently argued, Muslim scholars have been relativelyuninterested in elaborating a theory of vocal persuasion andagency; any positive or negative effect is largely attributed tothe listener. As the 9th century mystic al-Darani said: ‘Musicdoes not provoke in the heart that which is not there.’ That is,the female voice itself does not have the persuasive power toincite a person to commit evil deeds; this can only happen ifthe evil already reigns in the listener’s heart. Besides, if theorigin of female nasyid, as its proponents claim, truly is theshalawat badr sung by those who hailed Muhammed’s arrivalin Medina, and if claims that it was women who did thesinging are true, a woman’s singing voice might one dayresound more as a blessing than as a bane. For now, the debatecontinues.

References

- Barendregt, B. 2006. ‘Cyber-Nasyid: Transnational Soundscapes in

Muslim Southeast Asia’. Holden, T. and T. Scrase, eds. Medi@asia:

Communication, Culture, Context. London: Routledge.

- Göle, N. 2002. ‘Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imagi-

naries’. Public Culture 14-1.

- Hirschkind, C. 2004. ‘Hearing Modernity: Egypt, Islam and the

Pious Ear’. Erlman, V., ed. Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Lis-

tening, and Modernity. Oxford: Berg.

- Nieuwkerk, K. Van. 1998. ‘An Hour for God and an Hour for the

Heart. Islam, Gender and Female Entertainment in Egypt’. Music

and Anthropology 3.

Bart Barendregt lectures in the Anthropology Department of Leiden

University, and is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of South-

east Asian Studies at the same university. Barendregt was the former

chair of the Bake Society for Ethnomusicology.

[email protected]

Female nasyid group

Solelah as featured

on their recent Inti

album (2005). When

the Malaysian band

performed in Indone-

sia it was for an all-

female audience.

Jason C.S. Teo & B.Y.

Teoh / Music Valley

SDN.BHD

The audience for boy band concerts is predomi-

nantly female. Rising nasyid stars Fatih perform

here in early 2006.

Bart Barendregt

I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 4 0 | S p r i n g 2 0 0 6 1 1


Gandrung is a beloved entertainment for ritual celebrations in rural Banyuwangi in easternmost Java. In this genre – a variety of oneknown throughout western Indonesia – a professional female singer-dancer, the gandrung (who gives the genre its name) danceswith male guests, accompanied by a small ensemble of drums, violins, gongs, and a triangle. It is not always easy for a gandrung toentice guests onto the dance floor, since their dancing, like hers, requires artistry and poise while their movements will be watchedcritically by spectators, who may include their own wives and children.

Dance-floor politics in easternmost Java

Bernard Arps

On the other hand, there are thosewho find dancing with a gandrung,

with her smile and her fantastic attirethat contrasts so strikingly with theirown, nothing less than addictive. Hercharm also lies behind the adoption of‘the gandrung dancer’ as the official mas-cot of the Regency of Banyuwangi in late2002. ‘The dancer says welcome toBanyuwangi, as it were’, the head of theDepartment of Tourism explained. Stat-ues and other images of gandrungdancers adorn public places throughoutthe region.

Gandrung, as just sketched, may seem afrivolous but basically innocuous enter-tainment designed to give the guys agood time, while providing the audiencewith an elegant and occasionally irk-some though otherwise inconsequentialspectacle. Gandrung, however, is per-meated with and enmeshed in politics– politics with a much broader reachthan the immediate setting and durationof a performance. Apart from beingobjectionable to many Muslims (some-thing not addressed here), the sensuousallure of gandrung is a powerful factor inthe management of gender relations,and even in regional patriotism.

The diegesis of gandrungperformanceA gandrung performance is participato-ry: it is not only intended to please spec-tators, but to lure some of them to

dance. The participants move, speak,and interact in ways rarely seen in othercontexts; the gandrung or gandrungs(usually there are two), their successivemale and occasionally female dancepartners, and the musicians project per-sonas that differ from the personas theyproject elsewhere. Though the per-formance is not narrative or dramatic,the participants jointly construct what Iwould characterize as a diegesis. (Thisnotion, which hails from film theorywhere it refers to the world depicted ina film, is rarely applied to genres likegandrung though it helps to understandwhat is happening. See Arps 1996:66.)

A performance consists of two types ofalternating segments roughly equal inlength (20-30 minutes) but very differ-ent in diegesis. One is called maju, lit-erally ‘coming forward’, which involvesfour men entering the arena and danc-ing in turn with a gandrung, while theother gandrung sits at the side and sings.The other segment is called repènan,‘singing’, during which the gandrungssit and converse among guests, and singsongs by request.

In the maju segments the diegesis issensual and may verge on the erotic. Itis highly corporeal, involving choreo-graphed movements and postures. Themale dancer projects bravado and thegandrung dances responsively, some-times defensively, but may also teaseand even ridicule him if he does notdance well. While the danced interaction

stands central, maju also involvessinging, which contributes to the diege-sis; the dance pieces are usually classi-cal compositions whose lyrics express awoman’s infatuation with a man. Theyare suggestive rather than explicit:

My mum doesn’t like younor does my dadbut I won’t give you up

You’ve gone home, leaving me behindif I knew the way, I’d come after you

The singing segments are also interac-tive and the physical presence of thegandrung at the table is important, buthere the diegesis is primarily a matterof language. Two kinds of song areprominent. In one, the gandrung singslyrics given to her by a guest on a pieceof paper, commenting critically andhumorously on fellow villagers; theother is drawn from local popular musicwhose lyrics are about male-female rela-tions or the region of Banyuwangi.

In the diegesis of gandrung perform-ance, the type ‘gandrung’ merges withthe type ‘woman’. There may be otherwomen on the dance floor and at thetables, but they belong to the type ‘man’.Their dance style is not like the gan-drung’s but like that of her male dancepartners. (These women are usuallywives or girlfriends of male guests, andsometimes prostitutes.)

PatriotismThe subject matter of the songs is quitebroad. When the lyrics invoke themesthat are not otherwise perceptible in theperformance and its immediate sur-roundings, those themes are therebyabsorbed into the diegesis. This is onereason why the diegesis of gandrung per-formance may bear relevance to affairsoutside the performance itself. Theother reason is that elements of the die-gesis may have parallels in the world atlarge. An example is the analogy of therelation gandrung-guest dancer with thatof woman-man.

As the performance draws people into itphysically, or at least psychologically, itimpresses its diegesis upon its partici-pants and spectators. It thus comes as nosurprise that gandrung has beenembraced by various institutions for thepromotion of political ends. This is espe-cially evident in the context of patriotism.Most songs in the repènan segments aretaken from local pop music, much ofwhich focuses on the beauty ofBanyuwangi’s nature, the heroism of itspeople and history – songs written underthe tutelage of the regional government.

Gandrung outsideperformance Gandrung is also used for promotionalcauses outside performance. The musiccan be heard on audio cassettes, videoCDs, and radio. Stage dances based ongandrung but performed by school girlsare a fixed component of official events

in Banyuwangi, especially for the wel-coming of visiting dignitaries. Statuesand other images of gandrung dancersare usually associated with the govern-ment as well. This is not just a matter ofgandrung functioning as an emblem ofregional identity; the statues often flanknotices of government programmes.

Only certain parts of gandrung diegesisare recreated in these mediated forms.The statues and other images alwaysportray the gandrung in a dance pose,never as a singer, let alone with themicrophone she wields in actual per-formances. The precarious, sensuouslycharged danced interaction with men isusually lacking as well. The gandrungthat accompanies promotional activitiesis not just a decontextualized but a san-itized gandrung.

The politics of attractionA critical question concerning languagein the world is how it is combined withother forms of representation to winpeople over. The importance of thisissue is not matched by the extent of itsstudy. The discipline of rhetoric isimportant, but focuses on specific kindsof (mostly western) speech and writing– on convincing – and not other kindsof winning over. If we want to under-stand this use of language and its fre-quent failing, other approaches areneeded and other forms of discoursemust be studied within their contexts.

Among them should be genres like gan-drung. The seductive potential of itsmusic and dance is a source of enjoy-ment, irritation and indignation: thegenre is alluring. As it attracts specta-tors to the performance space it createsa choreographic and discursive arena forthematizing cultural concerns that affectlife beyond the performance. What isbeing pulled into the diegesis is ‘experi-encing persons’. What is subsequentlyejected into the world and into otherdiegeses is persons who have now expe-

rienced that diegesis and may bringtheir experience to bear on those otherdiegeses. This possibility of influencingthe outside world is why gandrung isemployed for political causes.

Yet some aspects of the diegesis of per-formance are barred from the promo-tional use of gandrung. The Banyuwan-gi government uses gandrung as anemblem or mascot based on the real-ization that it has allure. The gandrungthat the government has in mind, how-ever, is the sanitized kind. Gandrung asentertainment at a ritual celebrationmay superficially look and sound thesame but it is much more complex, andin some respects radically different. Itinvites people jointly to create a diege-sis, but the diegesis is not harmonious.Rather, it is characterized by tension,especially between men and woman.This is also clear in the lyrics, which donot present a single vantage point onlove; many lyrics address gender injus-tice, and some explicitly thematize con-flict while the media market helps toproduce and spread such signs of antag-onism and dissent. In Banyuwangi,then, the sensuous charm of a singer-dancer lies at the heart of an extensiveand complex field of political forces. <

Reference

- Arps, Bernard. 1996. ‘The Song Guarding at

Night: Grounds for Cogency in a Javanese

Incantation.’ Headley, Stephen C., ed.

Towards an Anthropology of Prayer: Javanese

Ethnolinguistic Studies. Aix-en-Provence:

Publications de l’Université de Provence.

Bernard Arps is Professor of Javanese Lin-

guistics and Literature and Chair of the

Department of Languages and Cultures of

Southeast Asia and Oceania at Leiden Uni-

versity. He is completing several studies

based on his fieldwork in Banyuwangi since

1983, including a book on popular music,

dance and promotion. http://website.leiden

univ.nl/~arpsb/

[email protected] Dwi Yuliatin and a dance partner, Kemiren village, 10-11 March 2001 Ben Arps

A golden gandrung on one of Banyuwangi’s busiest streets, 2003 Ben Arps


> Research

Peter K ing

Why is the struggle against corrup-tion in Indonesia so difficult?

What are the main mechanisms for itsintensifying proliferation? Who are theprincipal beneficiaries and cost bearers?What role can Indonesian civil societyplay in overcoming the growing threatof KKN? Can Indonesia escape the KKNtrap, which threatens to create a futureof poverty and turmoil?

Corruption is central to understandingthe failure of Indonesia’s new rulers todeliver meaningful reform, well-found-ed prosperity or a measure of social jus-tice. In the late Suharto period the coun-try was widely thought of as akleptocracy, with one extended familyfiguring as kleptocrats-in-chief. SinceSuharto’s ‘fall’ (which has been muchexaggerated) and the advent of a ‘Refor-masi’ (which has fully qualified for itsinverted commas), we have a democra-tised – or at least oligopolised – anddecentralized version of Suharto-eraKKN.

The crony conglomerates, both Chineseand pribumi (indigenous Indonesian),and their ‘in-house’ banks have survivedthe crash of the currency, the crash ofthe banks, the crash of export-led growthand the rise of poverty. Persisting, per-vasive corruption has permitted most ofthem to weather default, bankruptcy,bank restructuring and asset sell-offs.They have preserved their businessempires in the face of complete finan-cial and economic disaster for the stateand the people. And they have resortedonce again to the tried and trustedmechanisms and networks of KKN tospectacular effect.

How did things go so wrong so quickly?Or we might ask: How did it all go soright for the cronies and their threat-ened business empires? As Robisonand Hadiz have shown, the refinancingof the bankrupt banks following theAsian financial crisis of 1997-98 waslong on carrot but short on stick.Almost all of the International Mone-tary Fund’s $14 billion, distributedthrough the Bank Indonesia liquiditysupport fund (BLBI) to rescue andreflate Indonesia’s private banks, was

promptly embezzled by the corporatecronies who controlled them.1 Thebanks lent the money ‘in-house’whence it disappeared, mainly into off-shore investments and debt repay-ment.

The court actions intended to recover thismoney were another sorry illustration ofthe failings of the Indonesian legal sys-tem in the reform process. Case aftercase collapsed under the influence offlawed judicial reasoning and action. TheIMF, the bountiful source of this new

instant debt mountain that was supposedto rescue the economy, watched aston-ished (though why should it have been?)and censorious – but ultimately power-less – from the sidelines.

Seven years on from the IMF ‘rescue’Indonesia is essentially still prostrateand now doubly crucified by the gnomesof Washington and Wall Street. In theSuharto years the World Bank’s tolera-tion of a steady haemorrhage of 30% orso of its own development loan fundingto KKN2 left a $10 billion public debtoverhang at the moment of crash in1997. The fresh multibillion dollar fias-

co of the IMF rescue package has nowsaddled the long-suffering Indonesianpublic with an additional debt of sever-al billion dollars.

Jeffrey Winters has suggested that thereshould be international criminalaccountability for the former debtmountain; it seems there should bemoral-political accountability at least forthe latter one, since the IMF saw fit tolend once again into a rotten structure.There is also the issue of domesticIndonesian accountability, which was

submerged in the rush to money poli-tics under Suharto’s successor and polit-ical crony, President Jusuf Habibie.Habibie pioneered his way on the backof the Golkar Party’s attempted lootingof Bank Bali3 and by bilking the povertyalleviation fund of Bulog (Badan Uru-san Logistik, the national logisticsagency)4 to assure funding for the 1999election.

The Suharto-era cronies were joined inresuming the plunder of the Indone-sian interior (to borrow a phrase fromMarx) by a widening circle of seniorbureaucrats, state industry sector exec-

utives, judges, prosecutors, court offi-cials, police and military generals(many retired) and politicians and partyofficials. Then, as decentralisationreforms took hold from 2001, officialsin the provinces and regencies, bothbureaucratic and elected, joined theKKN club, colluding with local busi-nessmen and operating even withoutthe centralised restraints of Suharto’sdictatorship. This has gravely sabotagedthe potential of special and regional(ordinary) autonomy to deliver long-delayed economic justice or a sense ofeffective local participation in theaggrieved provinces of Aceh and Papuaand elsewhere.5

To protect and swindle Thus money politics in parliaments wascomplemented by money justice, klep-tocratic state administration and TNI(Tentara Nasional Indonesia, or armedforces) capitalism, corruption and extor-tion. New government-established insti-tutions to combat corruption have pro-liferated since 1998 – most notably anAnti-Corruption Commission (KPK,Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi) andCourt – while anti-corruption NGOsfrom Transparency International to TNIWatch are active and articulate. Butdespite backing from mass print media,notably the Tempo group, Indonesiancivil society remains embattled, strug-gling for real empowerment in the anti-corruption campaign.

A principal reason for this is theimpunity of the military and military-dominated sectors of the government intheir violent dealing with civil societyopponents who seek to expose andundermine the military businessempire, which includes illegal loggingand log export,6 and fuel smuggling andtheft on a vast scale in collusion with cor-rupt officials at the state oil and gas com-pany, Pertamina (Pertambangan Minjakdan Gas Bumi Nasional).7 TNI and thepolice also routinely extend protectionto big business associates who them-selves employ violence and intimidationin defence of corrupt empires.

TNI remains a prime guarantor ofSuharto family wealth, which becameclear when Tommy Suharto spent a yearon the run in Jakarta under militaryprotection after procuring the murderof the judge who sentenced him toprison on corruption charges in 2001.8

Meanwhile, retired military generals atBIN (Badan Intelijen Negara, the StateIntelligence Agency) were plainlyinvolved in the poisoning-murder of thefounder of Kontras (Komisi UntukOrang Hilang dan Korban Tindak Kek-erasan, Commission for Disappear-ances and Victims of Violence) andleading the scourge of the TNI, Munir,in 2004. Only the BIN field operativeGaruda pilot, Pollycarpus, has beenbrought to trial for the killing.9

In Indonesia corruption thrives underthe influence of a large and still growingbusiness, political, administrative andmilitary elite who are prepared tounscrupulously wield state authorityand state violence – as well as privateviolence under state or military protec-tion – to defend their interests. TacklingKKN effectively depends on far-rangingreforms that must go well beyond thewindow-dressing of Reformasi. Bitterpolitical struggles over corruptionundoubtedly lie ahead. <

Peter King is a research associate in Gov-

ernment and International Relations at Syd-

ney University, where he was founding pres-

ident and later director of the Centre for

Peace and Conflict Studies. His most recent

book is 2004’s West Papua and Indonesia

Since Suharto: Independence, Autonomy or

Chaos? UNSW Press, Sydney. He was an IIAS

fellow in 2005.

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Experts and most Indonesians agree that since the fall of Suharto in 1998, Reformasi and Demokratisasi have failed to checkcorruption, commonly referred to as KKN: Korupsi, Kolusi dan Nepotisme. The new government of President Susilo BambangYudhoyono has made the fight against KKN its chief priority, but the results so far have been disappointing.

The Indonesian conundrum:entrenched corruption and failing reform

there should be international criminal accountability for the former debt mountain

Note

s


> Research

Richard Robison

Indeed, the future looked bleak forIndonesia’s large conglomerates,

consumed by unsustainable debts andlast-ditch struggles to keep their assetsfrom creditors. Nor was Indonesia inany position to resist the stringent IMFconditions for rescue.1 Suharto’sdemise in May 1998 unravelled theregime that had provided the frame-work for the highly organised systemof KKN and triggered a series of polit-ical and administrative reforms thatwould not only transform Indonesiainto a formal democracy but shiftadministrative authority to theprovinces and sub-provinces. Given thewave of popular opposition to corrup-tion, a central feature of anti-Suhartopolitics, here, surely, was the opportu-nity for mass-based parties to formaround the issue of clean and account-able government.

Dashed hopesYet, despite formal institutional reformsand efforts at building ‘good gover-nance’, it was soon clear that therewould be no unambiguous convergenceto liberal markets and politics. Thepower relations that had previouslydefined Indonesia proved remarkablyresilient, reconstituted within newadministrative and political frame-works. Many of the same figures whohad occupied centre stage under theSuharto regime remained pivotal play-ers within the new power structures.Most of the old conglomerates survived,hanging onto assets, receiving govern-ment bailouts and rebuilding politicalrelationships with the new political par-ties. Not only were attempts to prose-cute the corruptors of the Suharto eraineffective, the whole mechanism ofcorruption and rent-seeking survived ina form that was, according to many neo-liberal observers, more corrosive anddestructive because it was now morearbitrary and less structured.2 No newreformist parties emerged. Instead,reformers were absorbed into the oldparties, which became machines to cap-ture and distribute resources, colonisedby an army of opportunists, fixers andstand-over men. They were democraticto the extent that old arenas of patron-age were now open to a wider assemblyof individuals.3

Are we witnessing in Indonesia a peri-od of ‘savage capitalism’ as private inter-ests are released to do battle in anunconstrained marketplace? After all,stock exchanges, corporations, parlia-ments and financial systems in the earlyyears of market capitalism in Britain andthe US were characterised by corruptionand collusion of the grossest kind beforebeing progressively, but not wholly (asthe resurgence of cronyism in Bush’sAmerica illustrates), subordinated to asystematic rule of law.

Will the new economic and politicalentrepreneurs of Indonesia now beforced to address the costs of crony cap-italism by creating the institutions toresolve their growing collective actiondilemmas – including the provision ofeffective courts and an honest judiciary?Will new democratic institutions openthe door to reformist forces? Or are weseeing the natural evolution of a capi-talist society as administrative oligarchycollides with neo-liberal globalisation inthe early 21st century? Other similarneo-patrimonial market hybrids haveshown amazing resilience. The Philip-pines, for example, has been mired inoligarchic money politics for more thanfive decades despite deep immersion inglobal markets.

Since the crisis and the fall of Suhartooptimism has waned. Even the WorldBank has admitted the loneliness ofreformist technocrats operating in anindifferent and hostile environment.4

The failures of two presidents to drivereform suggest that defeat and humili-ation (in the case of Wahid) or co-optionand complicity (in the case of Megawati)are the only possible outcomes whendealing with powerful entrenched inter-ests. But this view is balanced by argu-ments that reform is a long road, thatthe growing pressure of global marketswill ultimately open the way for a tri-umph of technocratic rule and that lib-erated civil society will generate grow-ing popular authority over stateinstitutions.5

The logic of the machineFor many neo-liberal observers, includ-ing those within the IMF, the Asian cri-sis demonstrated the consequences oftrying to resist the inexorable logic anddiscipline of global capital markets. The

lesson was that Thomas Friedman’sanonymous and leaderless herds offund managers and global investorswould panic when they perceived thetransgression of the rules of the mar-ketplace.6 According to this view, enjoy-ing the benefits of global marketsrequires governments to accept the fun-damentals of good macro-economic pol-icy and promote ‘good governance’, andthat corporate defaulters repay theirdebts and repair their reputations if theyare to be accepted again into the globalmarketplace.

But is reform in Indonesia really beingenforced by the discipline of global mar-kets? Huge inflows of foreign directinvestment and other forms of financialcapital into Southeast Asia before thecrisis, made with the full knowledge thatcorruption and rent-seeking were cen-tral to the whole process of investment,suggest that global markets and at leastcertain forms of KKN can co-exist whereinvestors calculate (incorrectly in the1990s as it turned out) that levels ofprofits and promised political guaran-tees will offset the risks. The slow recov-ery of foreign investment in Indonesiaafter the crisis may be the consequenceof perceived instability and uncertaintyin the organisation of KKN rather thanthe fact of its continued existence. Whileglobal investors have been frightened bythe difficulties of dealing with default-ers and by the way commercial courtsand well-connected conglomerates havecolluded to avoid debt and bankruptcy,the evidence suggests that they are pre-pared to engage with former defaulterswhere new opportunities seem to out-weigh risks, especially in well-sub-scribed floats on the Jakarta StockExchange.7

We must also rethink the nature of thoseglobal markets that determine the flowof investment and finance into Indone-sia and to extent to which they are nowdominated by pools of finance locatedoverseas by the very conglomerates thatfled the rupiah in 1997, often with fundsthey had plundered from their ownexpiring banks, and for whom KKN is anormal and, indeed, necessary conditionfor commercial success. We must alsoassess whether the rise of China as anew market and source of investmentfor Indonesia implies rules of the mar-

ketplace quite different from those neo-liberal principles assumed to be univer-sal and immutable.

The reforming power ofinstitutions?Many policy makers argue that thebehaviour of individuals can be alteredby constructing institutions that providedifferent incentives and constraints onchoice. A key feature of IMF conditionsfor financial bailout included the recap-italisation of banks and new bankingregulations, the introduction of newbankruptcy and commercial courts,extended external auditing of govern-ment departments, the establishment ofanti-corruption agencies, new adminis-trative procedures and regulations tocontrol procurement and tendering.State agencies that formerly allocatedmonopolies and contracts, such as Per-tamina and Bulog, were broken up ortheir powers drastically altered.8 Thelaws of 1999 opened the door for a sys-tem of representative and decentralisedparliamentary government where soci-ety would triumph over the state.

Yet, while predatory and rent-seekingcoalitions can no longer organise theirpower in the old ways, they have beenable to survive within the new institu-tional frameworks. Money politics hassubsumed the new democratic politicalsystems.9 New legal and judicialarrangements, banking regulations andenvironmental regulations are oftenignored.10 The questions for policy-mak-ers is not essentially about capacity orprogram design but about politics: Whyare these institutional changes notundermining entrenched interests orstrengthening reformist coalitions?How are the former still able to attractinvestment and finance from globalmarkets and under what conditions?And what accommodations andalliances must entrenched interests nowforge and how may these open the doorto unintended changes?

A shift in power relationsIt was widely expected that the fall ofSuharto would release a progressive andreformist civil society from its longhibernation and transform reformistsentiments into political action throughnew democratic and decentralised insti-tutions. However, ‘civil society’ proved

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When the Asian economic crisis struck Indonesia in 1997 it was generally thought to signal the end of a system of power defined bythe corrupt and collusive relationships of KKN (Korupsi, Kolusi dan Nepotisme). Surely the days of the crony were over, and theircorporate empires would be taken over by large international investors.

Corruption, collusion and nepotism after Suharto: Indonesia’s past or future?

Note

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to be a highly complex and internally-divided entity where illiberal and preda-tory elements were also released andproved highly successful in shaping thepost-Suharto state. At the same time,reformers found that entering politicsmeant being drawn into the world ofmoney politics, where the scramble forrents was the main currency for survivaland alliances with military and extra-legal organisations were critical foraccess to the resources of the blackmarket economy.

Must we therefore conclude that theseismic political and institutionalreforms and upheavals have provided nonew effective avenues through whichreformist forces might impose theirinterests? This apparently depressingreality has driven the search for reformand reformers into three different areas.For neo-liberals, the path to reform is inthe relentless impact of global markets,institutional reforms and the glacialgrinding away of reformist politiciansand technocrats from above. On theother hand, many reformers outside theneo-liberal camp look outside theparliamentary arena to seek signs of realreform among NGOs and grass rootssocial movements. Others argue that thegrip of predatory alliances upon electoraland party politics may be exaggeratedand that these new systems do offeropportunities to throw out or prosecutecorrupt or unpopular politicians and foraspiring politicians unconnected to themain parties or the military to gain entryinto the world of politics in a way notpossible before.11

Indonesia provides a laboratory wherewe can observe the collision of marketswith highly illiberal, populist and preda-tory systems of power. It poses the ques-tion of whether the reform process setthe country on an inevitable coursetowards a grand liberal triumph of mar-kets, democracy and ‘good governance’,or whether the market dynamic is amore sinister one that preserves or evengenerates new systems of highly illiber-al, regulatory state authority. <

Richard Robison is Professor of Political

Economy at the Institute of Social Studies,

The Hague.


> Research

Gustaaf Reer ink

In less than a century, Bandung developed from a drowsytown of some 10,000 inhabitants into a metropolitan city

of over 2.5 million. Located in the mountainous West-JavanesePreanger region, it first served as a pleasant retreat for well-to-do Europeans. After independence, between 1945 and 1965,it was Indonesia’s fastest-growing city, as refugees fled West-Javanese countryside that had become a battleground betweenthe Republican Army and the Darul Islam movement for theestablishment of an Islamic state. Most people moved to rel-atively safe cities and hundreds of thousands found refuge inBandung. In later years more migrants came to take advan-tage of the increased demand for labour. To this day the cityattracts newcomers from all over Indonesia.

These vast migration flows, paired with government inaction,spawned many urban kampungs. In the colonial period, thecity literally engulfed nearby rural villages. The colonial munic-ipality kept these villages autonomous as legal enclaves thatapplied their own adat law instead of the system of land rightscreated by the Dutch Civil Code. After independence manyrural migrants moved into these villages, which soon lost theirrural character and developed into urban kampungs. Othermigrants formed new kampungs by squatting land, mostlyalong riversides, railway tracks and on graveyards. BecauseIndonesia did not formalise a housing policy until the 1970s,and because that policy has largely failed to meet the needs ofthe urban poor, migrants still have no choice but to settle inthese kampungs.

Treating the poor like the poorTo this day, urban kampung dwellers do not expect much fromthe government. During the first decades after independence,they remained more or less autonomous. From the 1970s,when the New Order’s economic policy began to yield a prof-it, the government started programs to improve kampung liv-ing conditions, but land tenure and land use were notaddressed. So despite physical, social and economic improve-ments, most kampungs are not in accordance with the formalland law regime. The 1960 Basic Agrarian Law (BAL) was anattempt to abolish the colonial dualist system of land rights.Unregistered (former) adat land was to be integrated into thesystem of statutory land rights created by the BAL. In order toaccelerate this process, the Indonesian government initiatedland registration projects beginning in the 1980s, providingland titles to the poor at low cost, but the projects themselveswere costly and had limited reach. Most important, the gov-ernment pursued an ambiguous policy toward providing thepoor with documentation reflecting legal entitlement to theirland. With the New Order developmentalist approach gainingprominence, the government wanted free reign to develop anyland however it wished. By not acknowledging land tenurearrangements existing outside systems of statutory land rightsand traditional adat law, it could do so.

The municipality has seldom been strict in enforcing regula-tions on land tenure and land use, not even after the Indone-sian parliament passed a spatial planning law in 1992. Thiswas not only the result of a lack of administrative capacity; thepolitical and socio-economic costs may also have been too highfor strict enforcement. But if the government or an investorneeded the land, they could indeed arbitrarily evict kampungdwellers without proper compensation, especially during theNew Order (1966-1998). In Bandung, evicted settlers some-times received some form of compensation, even if they pos-sessed no evidence of rights to the land.

The lack of land registration contributed to the emergence oflegal pluralism in Indonesia’s land sector. Many forms of landtenure found in kampungs still cannot be classified under thelegally acknowledged system of statutory land rights, but nei-ther under traditional adat law. Generally, kampung dwellersapply ‘semi-formal’ tenure arrangements, which are non-tra-

ditional and use notions of the formal system of land law andother formal legislation that do not even recognise them. How-ever, the local (urban sub-district and district) administrationdoes recognise and accept these arrangements (see also: Fitz-patrick 1997, 1999), not on any legal basis, but on the basisof daily practice, including the daily practice of corruption.Thus ‘semi-formal’ tenure arrangements may provide tenuresecurity for the urban poor, but this is not to say their landtenure is legally certain. Their security is based on their ownperceptions of the municipality’s attitude toward thesearrangements, itself determined by the level of support theurban poor receive from the local administration and localpoliticians. This attitude may easily change. Legal certaintyrequires legal recognition.

Post New Order hopesThe fall of Suharto and his New Order government and theensuing socio-political and legal reforms were generallyexpected to greatly influence the formation of the rule of lawand thus the extent of tenure security and legal certainty ofkampung dwellers. In particular, the 2001 Laws on RegionalAutonomy led to a complete overhaul of the country’s consti-tution: in principle, these laws not only transferred tasks andauthorities but also decision-making power and, to a lesserextent, financial means from Jakarta to districts and munici-palities. So, according to the laws, the National Land Agency(NLA), one of the country’s most corrupt state institutions,would have to transfer its powers to these local governments(on the NLA’s reputation, see: Bachriadi, Bachrioktora andSafitri 2005). Spatial planning would no longer be executedaccording to a top-down approach. Free elections on the dis-trict and municipal level would allow people to push for thereform of regional and local regulations necessary to clear theway for innovative approaches to land administration andmanagement. And because the laws also allowed districts andmunicipalities to generate their own local revenues (PAD -Pajak Asli Daerah), they would actually have the means toimplement innovations.

Soon, however, a number of presidential decisions diluted theeffect of the new laws on regional autonomy. Land issues overwhich districts and cities have authority are now limited toseven, such as spatial planning and the resolution of conflictsover the unauthorized occupation of land. But districts andcities already had authority over most of these issues, and oth-ers, such as the authority to define adat rights, are hardly rel-evant for a city like Bandung. So from a legal point of view, notmuch changed in the urban land sector. Nevertheless, the lawsdo have an impact on the legal position of Bandung kampungdwellers, though in a different manner than expected: thereis an increased risk of eviction for kampung dwellers from

‘their land’ but an increase in the amount of compensationthey receive.

Fiscal decentralisation has resulted in what some Indonesianscall ‘local revenue obsession’ (obsesi PAD). Bandung’s munic-ipal government goes out of its way to attract new investors.It wants the city to become a centre of the services industry,which in practice means shopping malls and factory outlets.To achieve this, the municipality must redevelop land, espe-cially if well-positioned, to meet economic or strategic goals.Kampung land is attractive for this purpose: it can be acquiredat low cost and redeveloping it eliminates urban eyesores whileupgrading Bandung to a modern metropolitan city.

Kampung powerIt is questionable whether the general public supports Ban-dung’s ambitious urban development agenda. Municipal offi-cials and council members have repeatedly demonstrated thatthey not only represent the people but also business interests.Local NGOs and academia criticised the latest spatial plan forthe lack of transparency in the decision-making process andfor its content (see for instance: Zulkaidi and Kumala Sari2004). In that respect, regional autonomy has not met expec-tations.

But kampung dwellers no longer accept land acquisition at anyprice. Negotiations over compensation last long and are can-tankerous. A recent example was the acquisition of land forthe Pasupati flyover, in north-central Bandung, which lastedover six years and led to vigourous protests by settlementdwellers affected by the project. In the end most dwellers wel-comed the outcome. Their daring to reject the municipal gov-ernment’s initial offer and organise protests won them relo-cation to a new settlement in the city’s outskirts, orcompensation for their buildings and land, even in the caseof some squatters.

These are not just power games. Local officials and politiciansnow acknowledge that kampung dwellers have a right to com-pensation. Still, the outcome of any acquisition of kampungland is uncertain, not only for the urban poor, but as a resultof the new socio-political balance, for any government insti-tution or investor wishing to acquire urban land. Recent expe-riences have led the Indonesian government to pass a new reg-ulation that should facilitate efficient land acquisition.However, it applies only to land registered according to theBAL, and otherwise leaves matters of eviction and compensa-tion to the discretion of the municipal government. As long asthere is uncertainty about the legal position of kampungdwellers, the once useful flexibility in the system of land lawwill harm any form of urban development. In terms of timeand money, and given its development ambitions, the Bandungmunicipality is paying a high price for this uncertainty. <

Works cited

- Bachriadi, D., Y. Bachrioktora, and H. Safitri. 2004. ‘Ketika Penye-

lenggaraan Pemerintahan Menyimpang: Mal Administrasi Di

Bidang Pertanahan’. Bandung: Komisi Ombudsman Nasional &

Konsortium Pembaruan Agraria.

- Fitzpatrick, D. 1999. ‘Beyond Dualism: Land Acquisition and Law

in Indonesia’. Lindsey, T., ed. Indonesia, Law and Society. Sydney:

the Federation Press, 74-96.

- —. ‘Disputes and Pluralism in Modern Indonesian Land Law’. 1997.

The Yale Journal of International Law, 171-212.

- Zulkaidi, D., and N. Kumala Sari. 2004. ‘Penilainan Tingkat

Transparansi Dalam Proses Penyusunan Rtrw Kota, Studi Kasus:

Proses Penyusunan Naskah RTRW Kota Bandung’. Jurnal Peren-

canaan Wilayah dan Kota 15-1, 48-68.

Gustaaf Reerink

Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Development

Faculty of Law

Leiden University

[email protected]

Most Indonesian urban poor live in ramshackle settlements called kampungs and occupy land according to tenure arrangementsunrecognised by the formal land law regime. Reform since the 1998 fall of Suharto has led to some recognition of these ‘semi-formal’ arrangements. This complicates the ambitious development agenda of a city like Bandung, pitting two sides with seeminglyconflicting interests against each other: the urban poor and the municipal government. Both are dissatisfied with Bandung’s landreforms.

The price of uncertainty:kampung land politics in post-Suharto Bandung

A riverside kampung

in sub-district Taman

Sari, north Bandung

courtesy of author


> Research

Reconcilable differences?Negotiation and selective ignorance arecommon ways of dealing with landissues in Pasir’s mountains. Mountaincommunities consider the district gov-ernment as only one of many sources ofauthority, while the government’s admin-istrative decisions show disregard for theexistence of local traditional systems ofland management. The two meet onlythrough a chain of NGOs with variedlocal expertise and influence, but with asolid position in local politics. Althoughthe local has clearly gained a place in dis-trict politics, its relation to ‘local ways’ isnot necessarily clear or direct. The phys-ical and procedural distance betweenmountain communities and the districtgovernment allows for the communities’locality to be politicized by outsiders,such as the LAP and rival PBA-PDB.

On the upside, district politics are cer-tainly more influenced by local circum-stances than they were before decen-tralisation. ‘Local ways’ are a platformfor local politics and are regarded assuch by local governments. However, inspite of what some politicians andNGOs claim, ‘local ways’ are at risk ofbecoming subservient to local politics.The political experimenting currentlytaking place in districts throughoutIndonesia has not yet led to stableresults. Local people may gain influencein district politics, or a local political andeconomic elite may seize control afterthe New Order’s example. Pasir’s poli-tics appear to be evolving toward the for-mer, but it is too early to conclude that anew style of district government hasbeen established.

References

- Haverfield, Rachel. 1999. ‘Hak Ulayat and

the State: Land Reform in Indonesia’.

Lindsey, T., ed. Indonesia, Law and Society.

Sydney: The Federation Press.

- Sakai, Minako. 2002. ‘Land Dispute Reso-

lution in the Political Reform at the Time

of Decentralization in Indonesia’.

Antropologi Indonesia Special Volume.

- Slaats, Herman. 2000. ‘Land Law in

Indonesia: Changing Approaches’. IIAS

Newsletter 22.

Laurens Bakker

Institute of Folk Law

Radboud University Nijmegen

[email protected]

Nearly five years after the implementation of administrative decentralisation in Indonesia, popular influence on governance hasincreased, especially at the kabupaten (district) level, where ‘local ways’ have become a hot topic in political discourse. But what arelocal ways and to whom do they belong? Can they be reconciled with national law? Consider land tenure, where district regulationsand grassroots practice often differ: in Pasir, government and society are looking to tradition, national law and Pasir identity toredefine authority over land.

Land and authority: the state and the village in Pasir, East Kalimantan

Laurens Bakker

Pasir is the southernmost district ofthe province of East Kalimantan,

comprised of a flat coastal plain and amountainous, forested hinterland calledGunung Lumut. Most inhabitants areethnic Orang Pasir who have recentlyshifted their cultural focus from nearbyCentral Kalimantan’s Dayak communi-ties to the ethnically diverse coastal area,Islam and Malayu identity.

Without its natural resources, Pasirwould have been an inconspicuousperipheral district within Indonesia. Oilpalm plantations and mining dominatethe coastal area and provide work tomigrants from throughout Indonesia.In the mountains, where communitiesof subsistence farmers live in villagescomprised of a small number of extend-ed families, legal (and illegal) loggingand ladang slash-and-burn farming arethe main economic activities. Local cus-toms and border agreements betweencommunities, rather than national lawor government policies, regulate accessto land.

Pasir’s district government, based in thecity of Tanah Grogot, is far away fromthe mountains. Because communica-tion and administrative control are lack-ing, government policies and regula-tions frequently hold no sway inmountain villages. Moreover, mountaincommunities saw the New Order’s uni-lateral management of logging and min-ing projects in Gunung Lumut as dicta-torial and unjust, leaving themsuspicious of all government initiativesand national law. As a result, official reg-ulations are implemented along thecoast, but lessen in influence and evendisappear in the mountains. Govern-ment law and local practise usually coex-ist peacefully because would-beenforcers or practitioners ignore, orremain oblivious to, the other’s stric-tures.

When it comes to land, I am the stateGunung Lumut communities governland and forest according to local waysusually referred to by the umbrella termadat, translated as ‘custom’ or ‘tradition’.Depending on the context, adat is bothadored and rejected in national politics.In representing local identity and tradi-tion, adat has for years been a usefulinstrument in tying local cultural vari-ety to matters of national economicinterest, such as tourism. In matters ofland or forest management, however,local adat and national policy-makingare frequently at odds. According toIndonesia’s Basic Agrarian Law (BAL)of 1960, national land law is adat law,but the BAL does not define adat; itmerely provides five broad qualificationsunder which the validity of adat landclaims may be overruled (see also Haver-

field 1999). During the New Order,these qualifications were often appliedto nullify adat claims regardless of theirvalidity. Moreover, the BAL mentionsonly individual rights to land, whereastraditional rights are often communal.

The illegality of communal claims doesnot stop the population from makingthem. In recent years national mediaexposure and the establishment of a net-work of adat community NGOs havehelped increase the number of cases inwhich communal lands are (re)claimedby adat communities. The Minister ofAgraria/Head of the National LandAgency tried to address this in a 1999regulation specifying conditions for therecognition of such claims and guide-lines for their settlement (see also Slaats2000; Sakai 2002). The regulationdirects all district governments to inves-tigate whether communal land claimsexist within their district.

The Pasir government enlisted a teamof researchers from UniversitasHasanuddin in Makassar to conductfour days of field research in 2002,mainly on the coastal plain where largenumbers of migrants live. Although partof the team worked along GunungLumut’s periphery, no research wasdone in the mountainous region itself.Results showed clear differences amongthe areas studied, but final conclusionswere presented in terms of a percentageof the whole rather than a breakdown byarea, making existing claims appearinsignificant. Thus, in 2003, the districtgovernment drafted a regulation statingthat communal land rights effectively nolonger existed in Pasir.

You’re not the state, we areThis, to many, did not reflect ‘localways’. Three local NGOs, claiming torepresent Pasir’s adat communities,immediately challenged the district gov-ernment. The first was LAP (LembagaAdat Paser, or Foundation for Adat inPasir), whose mission is to improve reli-gious, medical and education facilitiesfor all of Pasir’s population. The second,PEMA (Persatuan Masyarakat AdatPaser, or Association of Adat Commu-nities in Pasir), is a small GunungLumut organisation that puts its con-siderable knowledge of local circum-stances to work on just about anythingit finds relevant. The third, PBA-PDB(Persatuan Benuaq Adat – Paser DayakSerumpun, or United Adat People –Dayak Pasir Division), attempts tostrengthen the position of the OrangPasir by joining forces with Dayakorganisations from other areas of Kali-mantan.

Through a special partnership, LAP,though not well-known outside its basein Tanah Grogot, is the district govern-ment’s official liaison with all otherNGOs – all, that is, except PBA-PDB.

Also based in Tanah Grogot, PBA-PDBinstead tries to attract the attention ofthe government, newspapers, and Pasirsociety through demonstrations.Although both claim to represent adatgroups, they have in fact little contactwith them and rely on third party infor-mation to pursue their goal of influenc-ing the government in Tanah Grogot– which, since both have supporters inand around the local government, theyoften achieve.

The two organisations will, like truepoliticians, co-operate to keep smallerNGOs small but are otherwise fanaticalrivals. Given the choice between repre-senting their clients and gaining politi-cal influence, both opt for the latter andtake possible inconsistencies with ‘localways’ for granted. Only PEMA has actu-al links with the adat communities allthree NGOs claim to represent. Basedin the mountainous Gunung Lumut,this proximity to the grassroots resultsin the organisation’s isolation from thepolitical nerve centre of Tanah Grogot,meaning that PEMA is dependent onLAP for access to the district govern-ment.

All three NGOs voiced their concern ata meeting organised by the district gov-ernment to discuss the 2003 draft reg-ulation. The government’s decision toaddress the NGOs’ protests is not mereopportunism. Most government officialsare of migrant origin and identify littlewith Pasir society beyond Tanah Grogot.They co-operate with organisations thatappear to best represent it – a pragmat-ic approach that endows governmentofficials with popular support, but leavesthem wary of opportunism and powerplays from other popular elementsincluding the very NGOs they co-oper-ate with.

State? What state?For the Orang Pasir of the GunungLumut mountains, the debate on com-munal adat lands was as irrelevant asevery government official who everpassed through to confirm the existence

of such lands. However, as in govern-ment-NGO relations, Gunung Lumutcommunities treat messages from ‘theother party’ pragmatically. When decen-tralisation began, village governmentsswiftly adopted the view that nationallaw recognised their authority over landand forest in their adat territories.Although authority over forests hassince been mostly recentralised to thedistricts’ Department of Forestry offices,some communities continue to issuetheir own logging permits. Similarly, theborders of a national forest reserve des-ignated by the Ministry of Forestry over-lap adat lands; some communities rec-ognize its protected status while othershold their customary rights higher,depending on their ideas about preser-vation or exploitation.

A second example of this pragmatism isthe size of territories claimed. Pasir’sNational Land Agency, in accordancewith national law, limited the amount ofland that can be registered per familyhead to 20 hectares. But Gunung Lumutcommunities claim much larger com-munal adat territories; with the small-est claim at around 150 ha per family, nocommunity has yet agreed to registra-tion. However, many have mapped theirterritories and borders and some areattempting, with varying success, to per-suade government officials to sign thesemaps as an expression of alternative reg-istration. Most communities express akeen interest in formal registration, buton a communal basis and for all of theterritory.

Indira (Indonesian-Netherlands studies of Decentralisation of the Indonesian ‘Rechtsstaat’

and its impact on ‘Agraria’) is a Dutch-Indonesian socio-legal research project focusing on

the impact of the new, decentralised administrative structure on the rule of law at regional

and local levels in Indonesia. The project studies how ‘guardian institutions’ such as courts

and ombudsmen oversee the legality of the acts of newly empowered legislatures and execu-

tives, and how the new system influences ‘realistic legal certainty’ of common people; an in-

depth analysis is made in the sector of land law. Indira is part of the Royal Dutch Academy of

Sciences’ programme ‘Indonesia in Transition’. Participating universities include Universitas

Andalas, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Universitas Airlangga, Universitas Parahyangan, Leiden

University and Radboud University Nijmegen. A more detailed account can be found at:

www.indira.leidenuniv.nl.

Kalimantan(Indonesia)

Sarawak(Malaysia)

Brunei

Tanah GrogotPasir

Balikpapan

SamarindaPontianak

Kuching

Banjarmasin

Martapura

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> Research

Hans Hägerdal

P ieter van Dam’s words, taken fromhis voluminous study of the Dutch

East Indies Company (around 1700),2

may surprise a modern reader. At thetime of writing, the Company, or VOC,was at the height of its administrativeand commercial efficiency and hadexplored all commercial opportunities inthe region during the preceding century.Still, the judgment of van Dam rings withdiffidence toward the Portuguese, whohad been expelled from the Malay Penin-sula in 1641 and relegated from Makas-sar in 1660, but here stand out as a pow-erful entity in the Timor region.

The stubborn resilience of the Por-tuguese in what was perhaps their mostinaccessible overseas domain raises anumber of questions. How were theyable to dominate large parts of Timorand (until 1859) the surrounding islandsin the face of the much better-equippedand organised Dutch? What did Timormean to the Portuguese network inAsia? What were the decisive stages inthe division of Timor, whose conse-quences are apparent to this day? Theresilience of the Portuguese authority inEast Timor has been characterised as amiracle, but it might be more fitting tocall it a ‘paradox’. The Portuguese pres-ence, for all its problems and perceivedexploitative features, was in the end ableto implement symbols and perceptionsthat in more recent history thwarted theIndonesian integrationist project. Por-tuguese representatives on Timor were

frequently on the brink of expulsion,obliteration or resignation, but nonethe-less hung on until 1975.

How did they get there in the first place?The origins of the Dutch-Portuguesebipartition of Timor have recently beenaddressed by Arend de Roever (2002).3

In his thesis, de Roever contextualisesTimor by tracing the importance of thesandalwood trade that opened the islandto the evolving commercial networks ofthe 16th and 17th centuries. In this wayTimor, for all its marginality, became apart of the developing and increasinglyinterlinked world system (described by,for example, Immanuel Wallerstein).4

At the same time he points out the lim-its of contact dictated by Timor’s geog-raphy. Winds and currents make itscoasts inaccessible for much of the year,while its mountainous and dry interiorlimits manpower resources and foodproduction. De Roever argues that theDutch could very well have eliminatedPortuguese influence in Timor after1613 but failed to do so owing to otherpriorities in central Indonesia. Thus theVOC provided the Portuguese with sev-eral decades of breathing room. Whenthe VOC resumed its interest in Timorin the mid-17th century, they found thatthe Portuguese could not be dislodged.

All this deserves to be the subject of anin-depth study of how indigenous soci-eties responded to the impact of earlymodern colonialism (16th to 18th cen-turies), and how they participated in the

processes that led to the rough 50-50partition of Timor known to modern his-tory. The annual records of the VOC postin Kupang in West Timor constitute acomprehensive body of material fromthe 1650s to the 1790s. The Portuguesematerial is less well-preserved butincludes a substantial number of partly-published clerical and secular sources ofthe 16th century and later. Timorese oraltraditions, recorded since the 19th cen-tury, can be used from a posthumousperspective to clarify how events orprocesses were perceived by indigenousgroups.

Colonial seeds of divisionFrom these materials a few points canbe made, which may be elaborated byfuture research. First, the localisationof the Portuguese group clearlyexplains much of their resilience. Thisis by no means unique to the Timoresesituation; Malyn Newitt (2005) hasrecently stressed the role of mestiçopopulations in the preservation of var-ious Portuguese domains in Africa andAsia.5 It has also been pointed out thatsuch communities were in themselvesimportant prerequisites to engagingwith local populations in trade anddiplomacy. The Topasses, or Black Por-tuguese, a mestiço community, estab-lished a martial and self-confident cul-ture in Larantuka (East Flores) andTimor in the late 16th and early 17thcenturies. They were so firmly attachedto Dominican fathers that they resistedattempts to introduce Jesuit fathersinto the region. In letters, Topass lead-ers consistently appear as goodCatholic subjects of the King of Portu-gal, though it is clear that they at thesame time pursued their own politicalways and adopted (or rather inherited)many local customs.

By the late 17th century the Topassesdominated most of Timor, save for anenclave around Kupang where theDutch led a precarious existence. Topassleaders were able to profit from the tradeof sandalwood and other commodities,such as beeswax and slaves, capitalisingon the 1661 Dutch-Portuguese peacetreaty. Portuguese Macau was the maineconomic channel to the outside world.The Topass elite consolidated the manyminor Timorese principalities by way ofmatrimonial alliances, the establish-ment of minor ‘colonies’, and outrightthreats. The Dutch adversaries wereoften stunned by the power that Por-tuguese and Catholic symbols of author-ity possessed over the local Timoresearistocrats, given the rather superficialdissemination of Catholicism. Sourceshint that the locals incorporated suchsymbols in their own universe of con-notations. The concept of hegemonymight be applicable to the situation ofPortuguese Timor to a certain extent –

a system where opposition and differ-ence are not overtly repressed but ratherco-opted in a social order.

Until a century ago colonial ‘rule’ onTimor was a matter of indirect gover-nance. The number of whites in the Por-tuguese trading port of Lifau, in WestTimor, was no more than 50 in 1689,and the number of Dutch burgers inKupang was likewise limited. For thePortuguese and Dutch alike, it wasessential to bind local aristocracies totheir interests through institutionalisedexchange of gifts or goods. Over thethree centuries of colonial intrusion, theresources and organisational structureof Timorese principalities, far fromremaining in a pristine, changelessstate, were transformed by the dissemi-nation of firearms and the changing for-tunes of the sandalwood trade.

East and west and whyThis localised order constructed duringthe 17th century was disrupted by thepersistent attempts of the PortugueseEstado da India (Indian administration)to integrate Timor in its own hierarchybeginning in 1702. For long periods inthe 18th century a bitter struggle ragedbetween Topass leaders and centrally-appointed administrators, in whichlocal principalities became entangled.Finally, in 1769, the official governorhad to leave Lifau, the traditional Por-tuguese stronghold in West Timor, andestablish a new residence in Dili in theeast. Only in the 1780s did a reconcili-ation between the Topasses and the gov-ernor take place. By then, however,trade with Macau had begun to declinedue to insecure conditions on theisland. A consequence of the shift fromLifau to Dili was a rough division ofcolonial spheres of interest reflected ontoday’s map. The colonialists estab-lished closer contact with the easternprincipalities that had hitherto beenrather vaguely dependent. Meanwhile,the remaining Topass-dominated areatransformed into the Oecusse Ambenoenclave, which, although situated inwestern Timor, today belongs to TimorLeste.

A second factor in the story of Timor’sdivision is Dutch cautiousness. Thetrading post of Kupang, founded in 1653,was an almost constantly troubled post,and seems to have been maintained inorder to keep an eye on the Portuguese.Surrounded by three (and later five)small but loyal allied principalities, theDutch staged three ambitious militarycampaigns against Portuguese clients inthe 1650s, which ended dismally. Afterthat, they remained on the defensive foralmost a century. Dutch residents wereinstructed not to interfere in internalPortuguese disputes but rather to ‘letthem both jump in the bay’. Portugal’s

close affiliation to Britain after the 1703Methuen Treaty apparently reinforcedthe VOC’s commitment to relievingdiplomatic strain. Nevertheless, thisperiod ended with a major Topass inva-sion of VOC lands in 1749; in the well-known battle of Penfui, the Topassesand their clients were slaughtered in thethousands by a small ‘Dutch’ force (thatincluded very few whites).

After Penfui one can discern a briefperiod of Dutch expansionism. Numer-ous principalities on the western halfof the island changed allegiance almostovernight. Though some of them soonstrayed from the Dutch cause, this wasan important stage in the shaping ofthe political map of modern Timor.VOC ambitions were at their height in1761, when the resident Hans Albrechtvon Plüskow wished to use internalPortuguese dissension to once and forall establish Dutch authority through-out the unruly island. The attempt wasnot quite endorsed by Batavia and mis-fired badly; Von Plüskow was mur-dered by the Topasses and the wholeenterprise immediately imploded. Sub-sequent residents had little power orenergy to deal with the various rebel-lions, or the machinations of the Por-tuguese, as it was a time of generalfinancial and administrative decline forthe VOC.

Thus by the time of the dissolution ofthe VOC in 1799, the situation was asfollows. In East Timor, an economicallyweak but moderately stabilised colonialapparatus managed to co-opt a weak-ened Topass community. In West Timora fragile outpost of a crumbling colonialempire desperately tried to keep self-willed local principalities within theiralliance system. In spite of British inter-vention during the Napoleonic era, thisrough division of power lasted hence-forth, and was cemented throughDutch-Portuguese diplomatic agree-ments in 1851, 1859 and 1916. <

Notes

1. Dam, Pieter van. 1931. Beschryvinge van

de Oostindische Compagnie. Vol. II:1.

‘s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff. p. 258.

2. Ibid.

3. Roever, Arend de. 2002. De Jacht op

Sandelhout. De VOC en de Tweedeling van

Timor in de Zeventiende Eeuw. Zutphen:

Walburg Pers.

4. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974-1989. The

Modern World System. Vol. 1-3. New York:

Academic Press.

5. Newitt, Malyn. 2005. A History of Por-

tuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400-1668.

London: Routledge.

Hans Hägerdal is Senior Lecturer in Histo-

ry, University of Växjö, Sweden and a fellow

at IIAS.

[email protected]

Colonial rivalry and the partition of TimorWhat the islands deliver is in the first place sandalwood, and also some gold and beeswax.... Theinhabitants...who often wage war on each other, sometimes draw the Company into the game..., the reason whywe sometimes achieve some slaves.... But since the relation with Portugal is at peace again...we have and keeponly a small activity on Timor as well as Solor, pending the small trade that is done here, and also because thePortuguese have drawn everything to themselves, being by far the strongest and mostly having the inhabitantsby their side through their priests and divines, and by those means taking much advantage over us.1

Meo, a prominent

West Timorese

warrior, portrayed in

the 1820s.

Temminck, C.J. ed. 1839-

44. Verhandelingen Over

de Natuurlijke Geschie-

denis der Nederlandsche

Overzeesche Bezittingen,

3 vol. Leiden.


> Research

Abha Chauhan

The Kargil War of 1999 forced25,000 families from their homes

in Jammu district alone. Of those, 8,500migrated to camps in the Akhnoor sec-tor and ongoing fighting has trans-formed their status from temporary‘migrants’ to ‘settled’ residents. Fami-lies have lost breadwinners, houses,fields and crops, and farming cycleshave been disrupted. With little hope ofreturn and little to return to, familieshave persisted in the camps by formingnew strategies and kinship networks,securing food, shelter, livelihood, health,education – a future – as best they can.

From village to campDevipur, 24 kilometres from the Line ofControl, is Akhnoor sector’s largestcamp: 1,000-1,200 tents shelter 1,390families. The Jammu and Kashmir stategovernment and NGOs provide basicamenities such as hand pumps fordrinking water, schools and a dispensa-ry. Otherwise, camp life hardly resem-bles village life with its spatial and socialboundaries. Devipur’s population hailsfrom ten different villages while camplife forces families of different religionsand castes to reside in close proximityunder similar conditions. Most DevipurCamp residents are Hindu – Rajputs, themajority Scheduled Castes (ex-untouch-ables), and about 20-25 Brahmanhouseholds; there are four or five Sikhfamilies, one Christian family and noMuslim families. But migration fromvillage to camp changed the very defini-tion of ‘family’.

In the village, patrilineal joint familiesresided together. Typically, after the mar-riage of the second or third son, theextended family became too large tomanage, yet the family and its propertyremained undivided until the eldestmale, usually the father, decided to par-tition it, or died.

In Indian villages, every family orhousehold living together under oneroof has the right to a governmentration card, good for acquiring wheatflour, rice, sugar and cooking oil fromnearby depots at cheaper rates. Whenfamilies migrated from their villages tothe Devipur Camp, they were allottedtents on the basis of these ration cards:one tent per card. But the tents were toosmall to accommodate all those listedon a single card. To obtain more tents,families succeeded in acquiring newration cards listing only husband, wifeand their unmarried children, frag-menting the extended village householdamong multiple tents. Examples inDevipur Camp include a father andmother living in separate tents with dif-ferent children; a husband and wife liv-ing in entirely different locations orwithout their children; and widowedgrandmothers living with their grand-children.

Over the years new families formedwithin the camp as men and women ofdifferent families met, married and hadchildren. Such families moved out oftheir previous tent(s) and were allottednew tents of their own. Thus, within thecamp, each new marriage created a newhousehold. This differed from newhousehold creation in the village, whichtook considerably longer.

Changing family and genderrelationsThe system of tent distribution, and thenature of the tent itself, has led tochanges in household structure andrelationships. Privacy and security arelimited because tents cannot be closedproperly or locked; life remainsexposed, open and vulnerable to exter-nal intrusions. People worry that tradi-tional restrictions and taboos, espe-cially regarding the young, cannot bemaintained as they were in the village.People fear youths might choose theirspouses irrespective of caste and kin-ship rules or indulge in sex unboundby village tradition. This fear is exacer-bated because marital alliances arealready difficult to achieve. Now thatvillage customs are eroding and sexu-al mores loosening, people are afraidof character assassination, such aswhen a daughter is perceived as sham-ing a family when accused of havingengaged in pre-marital sex. This hasmade camp life tough and findingspouses even tougher.

Take Ram Singh, a retired army manwith two sons. He and his wife live inone tent and his younger son and hisfamily live in another one nearby. Whilehis son is at work outside of camp, RamSingh stays with his son’s family towatch over them. Meanwhile, RamSingh’s wife stays with their elder sonand his family in a settled colony 20 km

away, where the son serves at an armypost and his children require theirgrandmother’s presence. According toRam Singh, back in the village he didnot have to worry about his family mem-bers’ security and his wife did not haveto leave her home to be with the elderson’s family because they all lived underthe same roof. His case shows that whilehis household has fragmented, his fam-ily ties are as strong as before.

Thus the camp has changed the role ofthe father or family patriarch and thefamily’s division of labour. In the village,each family member had a certain sta-tus and performed tasks based on gen-der and age. The joint-family also under-stood that certain areas of the housewere for the couple alone or for womenonly. Because the authority of the patri-arch or male elders is not exerciseddirectly within the tent, gender relationswithin the family have loosened and, asa result, women and adult children havemore say in family matters. Youngwomen in particular reign over mattersrelated to education and the marriage ofchildren.

Increased freedom has also madewomen more vulnerable, because it haseroded gender boundaries and overallsecurity traditionally provided by thestructure inherent to the joint-familyhousehold. This may be one reasonbehind female solidarity in the camps.New women’s social activities have tran-scended traditional boundaries, as the2002 formation of Mahila Mandals(Women’s Groups) demonstrated. Threesuch groups exist in Devipur; womenshare views and problems, discuss fam-ily health, hygiene and children’s edu-cation issues, and organize recreationalactivities that unite women irrespectiveof caste or village origin and foster tiesbased largely on gender.

In the villages, family was an identityexpressed through sharing, cooperationand common lineage, which wider tiesof kinship extended. The camp, howev-er, inaugurated inter-village ties thatgrew into a single camp consciousnessand identity that took precedence overvillage and family identity. For example,migrants formed the New Migrant Asso-ciation comprised of camp representa-tives who lobby the government foradditional settlement facilities. A campculture akin to a large extended familyhas developed in Devipur: relationshipsare bound as much by the ties of mar-riage and blood as by the primacy givento the overall well-being and problemsof camp dwellers.

Changing marriage andkinship rulesThe diverse backgrounds of the Devipurpopulation have influenced gender rela-tions between families. Traditionally,rules of kinship and marriage governsocial life; village exogamy is not the ruleand marriages are arranged betweenindividuals both within and beyond thevillage. Religion and caste endogamy andgotra (clan) exogamy are maintained.Brahmins, Rajputs, Mahajans (businesscommunity), Jats (peasants) and theScheduled Castes all traditionally followcaste endogamy. The difference of statusbetween wife-giver and wife-taker fami-lies – the family taking the wife is cus-tomarily considered to be of higher sta-tus than the family giving her – is notvery significant in the camp. Exchangemarriage – the marriage of a man to hissister’s husband’s sister – was once com-mon in the village; if a brother or sisterwas not present, then the marriage wasarranged through cousins. Whileexchange marriages have not disap-peared, they have declined drastically.

Some women, given the greater contextof crisis and conflict and the uncertain-ty that goes with increased freedom, stillfeel more secure pursuing marriagethrough kinship relations. But moreoften today people prefer to reachbeyond kinship circles. War hasincreased the number of widows, yet thenumber of widows who remarry hasdecreased. Marriage of a young widowis welcomed, but not of an elderlywoman who has adult children. Thepressure on the wife of the deceased toremain an unmarried widow hasincreased owing to a widow’s entitle-ment to a pension, employment and theglorification of her spouse’s death as amartyr. In the village widows lived intheir in-laws’ household, but in thecamp most widows remain single andlive alone or with one or two relativeswith whom they feel most comfortable.

A girl’s father might be willing to givehis daughter to a prospective groom liv-ing in the camp if the latter has a goodgovernment job, as he might one day beable to leave the camp and settle in a bet-

ter place. But the reality for most in thecamps is grim. Agricultural activity hasdeclined and 80% of young men areunemployed; some suffer from alco-holism and succumb to gambling. Girls,though engaged in household chores,also have ample time on their hands.The recent government decision to shiftschooling back to the border villages fur-ther increased the already high drop-outrate of 50%. This has reinforced thebelief that the camp is home only to thepoor, the elderly and the widowed –those who cannot find better alterna-tives. Whereas the village is sanctifiedby its traditional methods, rules andsocial controls, the camp’s perception asa place where unmarried boys and girlsare doomed to stay makes outsidersreluctant to arrange a marriage withanyone living there. The average mar-riage age has risen because satisfyingtraditional caste and kinship rules andovercoming disadvantages of camp lifehave combined to make matchmakingexceedingly difficult.

Escaping the camp through marriagehas therefore become an elusive ideal:to arrange marriage with someone out-side the camp and to settle in his village.If the latter is not possible, then anoth-er area is chosen. This has revived themaile, a gathering where members wor-ship the clan deity, eat together and dis-cuss intra-clan problems, issues andmarriage alliances. Every clan has itsmaile; the frequency of such gatheringsand the number of people who attendthem have increased. The feasts provideopportunities to gain new information,necessary to find a suitable bride orbridegroom.

Microcosm of social change?The traditional extended family hasmorphed into a new kind of ‘household’in Devipur Camp: it can be a marriedcouple with their unmarried children; asingle person (a widow); a dyad (wid-owed mother and her daughter) or atriad (grandfather, daughter-in-law andthe grand-daughter); a mother stayingwith her daughters and her daughters’children. Many family members and kinno longer live together and have formednew neighbourhoods of people relatedthrough little more than war and hap-penstance. Family activities now involvea much wider network, increasing open-ness and diminishing traditional hier-archy. Women exercise more decision-making power within the family andenjoy more freedom outside it, thoughsome sense uncertainty and anxiety aswell; increased female mobility and theirnewfound collective identity haveproven female identity can be bolsteredby more than blood alone. And so, too,the notions of family and kinship. <

Abha Chauhan is Associate Professor in the

Department of Sociology at the University of

Jammu, India. She was an IIAS fellow in

2005.

Living on the Line of Control: changing family and kinship networks in Devipur Camp

On 26 October 1947 the state of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to the Indian Union, infuriating Pakistan and spawning one of theworld’s longest unresolved conflicts: Kashmir. India and Pakistan’s half-century of perpetual conflict has been punctuated by fourfull-scale wars waged over the Line of Control, forcing villagers to hinterland refugee camps that have fundamentally changed thestructure of the families living in them.

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> Arts

The post-1987 liberalisation of society and blossoming of feminist movements in Taiwan opened space for female artists, whospearheaded the reinterpretation of gender, class and ethnicity in a patriarchal society. Amid the ambivalence and heterogeneityinduced in Taiwanese culture by its colonial history, women began to express their cultural ‘in-betweenness’ and modernity incurated exhibitions.

Ming-Hui Chen

In 1949 defeated Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek fledwith his army and over one million civilians to Taiwan.

There, on 19 May 1949, Chiang officially declared martial law.Its lifting four decades later spawned a re-examination of theNationalist regime’s dogmatism, and its social and culturalvalues. The lifting of martial law began a chaotic time for theTaiwanese people, as society deconstructed and criticised theold values and struggled to find its national and ethnic iden-tity. This movement presented new challenges for Taiwanesewomen.

The two countries that most recently controlled Taiwan, Chinaand Japan, were both strongly influenced by Confucianism.Confucianism’s gender-based hierarchy limits women’sfreedom and educates them to accept this ideology. ThusTaiwanese women are facing challenges presented not onlyby the colonial past, but by male-centred ideology. Theirstruggles, however, have become a catalyst for women’s artand culture.

Third world womenTaiwan is not evenly developed. A divide exists between citiesand rural areas. Travelling from a major city into the country-side means leaving behind modern technology, informationand buildings, and entering places where conservatism andreligious control are entrenched in people’s values and pover-ty and gender inequality are the norm. The differencesbetween the two realms seem to mirror those between the firstand third worlds, but here they exist on the same small island.According to Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s description, the‘Third World Woman’ leads ‘an essentially truncated life basedon her feminine gender [read: sexually constrained] and being‘third world’ [read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, religious, domesticated, family-oriented, victimized]’(Mohanty 2003: 53).

The number of women’s movements and grassroots organ-isations mushroomed after martial law was suspended in1987. Since the first group was set up in 1983, more than 46gender study institutions and research centres have beenestablished. They have played an important role in assistingwomen and have encouraged them to express themselvesthrough art.

A third spaceGlobalisation, especially its American strain, has also affect-ed Taiwanese society. The proximity of people raised accord-ing to traditional values to those raised in modern society hascreated tension. A mixture of Taiwanese, Mandarin and evensome Japanese rings out across a landscape dotted with tra-ditional Taoist temples and modern western buildings. Tai-wanese cultural identity emerges from this ambivalence andheterogeneity and presents the possibility of a ‘third space’ forwomen’s artistic creation. In other words, the environmentand its colonial history challenge female artists to hybridisetheir voice in order to be heard and understood.

Curatorial strategies reflect this change. Before 1996, womenartists could show their works only as a group in some com-mercial and private galleries, without vivid themes or curator-ial concepts. As a result, they were regarded more as amateursthan professionals. But the 1996 ‘Taipei Biennial: The Questfor Identity – Sexuality and Power’ drew public attention towomen’s art. Curator Hsieh Tung-Shan brought the debateabout ‘body’ and ‘gender’ into a public art space and was thefirst to show the many connections between gender and thebody in current cultural discussion, including heterosexuality,homoeroticism, homosexual politics and the body’s politicalaesthetics. Artist Lin Pey-Chwen’s work, for example, chal-lenged men’s stereotyping of what female beauty should be.

In 1997, feminists and women artists switched their focusfrom sexual dualism to politics, society and nationality, as illus-

trated by two women’s exhibitions: ‘The 228 Art Exhibition’and ‘On the Rim, Comfort and Relief’. ‘The 228 Art Exhibi-tion’, presented at the Fine Arts Museum of Taipei (FAMT)and subtitled ‘The Forgotten Women’, emphasised the heal-ing of wounds suffered under the Chinese Nationalist gov-ernment as seen from female points of view. The 228 Mas-sacre used to be commemorated solely by men, while women’ssuffering during that same atrocity was ignored. In this exhi-bition, the curator attempted to recapture what had been lostand provided the audience with a broader view by showingwomen’s perspectives.

‘On the Rim, Comfort and Relief ’ was held at the Hsin-Chung Cultural Centre, located in the outskirts of Taipei,a metropolis well known for a textile industry dependenton women labourers. The curator invited artists fromTaiwan, Japan, Korea and America to create works aboutthe lives and labour of local women. The show blurred theboundary between the centre (urban elites) and the mar-gin (rural labourers) and expressed appreciation for womenwho worked in the textile industry most of their lives andhelped spur Taiwan’s ‘economic miracle’ beginning in the1960s.

Speaking subalternsIn 1988, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak coined the term ‘subal-tern’ to refer to the general attribute of subordination in SouthAsian society, whether expressed in terms of class, caste, age,gender or in any other way (Guha 1988: 35). His ‘Can the Sub-altern Speak?’ asserted that ‘in the context of colonial pro-duction, the subaltern had no history and cannot speak, thesubaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow’ (Ashcroft1995: 28).

When discussing artistic development, I intend ‘speak’ tomean ‘having an opportunity to show one’s work in public andbeing noticed’. Taiwanese women artists, as doubly subordi-nated subalterns, are in a better position to ‘speak’ today thanthose who were working before the late 1980s. Although theyhave had the chance to ‘talk’ (to show their works even thoughthey may not be noticed by the public or press) since the early1990s, only recently, in the exhibitions mentioned above, havethey learned ‘how to speak’ and ‘what to speak’. In 1998, forexample, the exhibitions ‘Women 60’ (shown at three differ-ent galleries in northern, central and southern Taiwan) and‘Mind and Spirit’ (shown at the FAMT) established a geneal-ogy of Taiwanese women’s art history. It was the first time thatwomen artists from different generations showed their workstogether, creating a narrative art history. Since then, Taiwanesewomen artists have been able to ‘speak’ loudly.

A new centurySince 2000, Taiwanese women’s exhibitions have addressedpluralism and globalisation. The exhibition ‘Journey of theSpirit’, shown at the Kaohsiung Fine Arts Museum (KFAM)in 2000, showcased aboriginal women artists; their traditionalhandiworks were considered on the same plane as so-called‘fine arts’. ‘Sweet and Sour Yeast’ (shown in Taipei’s Hua-ShanArts District and Kaohsiung’s Kia-A-Thau Art Village) empha-sised women artists’ involvement in alternative art spaces. The2003 shows ‘BuBaoFu’ (at Stock 20 in Taichun) and ‘Big QuiltProject’ (at the KFAM) displayed appreciation for the beautyof women’s fabric arts, marking the first time in Taiwaneseart history that the line between high art and low art was decon-structed by curators’ strategies and artists’ efforts. Also in2003, the First International Women’s Art Festival at theKFAM vividly demonstrated how technology has affected ourlives and how women have responded to it artistically.

The focus of Taiwanese women artists has shifted from fight-ing for equality to confidently celebrating their talent: now theart itself, instead of the artist’s freedom to show it, commandsattention. Finding their place in the art world and breakingaway from the gender-based constrictions of previous colonis-ers have become their primary aims, and with more womenemerging as administrators in the arts, women are offeredmore chances to show and curate their work. They are nolonger silent. <

References

- Ashcroft, Bill et al, eds. 1995. The Post-Colonial Studies: Reader.

London: Routledge.

- Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri C., eds. 1988. Selected Subaltern

Studies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

- Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist

Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’. Lewis, Reina and Mills, Sara,

eds. Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press Ltd.

Ming-Hui Chen is a PhD candidate in the School of Art and Design

at Loughborough University in the UK. Her research interests centre

on the rapidly developing contemporary women’s arts scene in Tai-

wan, post-colonialism and feminism. She also remains a committed

fine artist and has regularly shown her works internationally.

[email protected]

Contemporary Taiwanese women’s arts: curating a movement into art

Ming-Hui Chen.

Mass of Conscious-

ness. Ink on paper.

2000.


> Poetry

You’ve no right to be sober – The world doesn’t agree with that.

You’ve no right to be decent – The world is consumed with pride.

– Danzanravjaa, 1856

Simon Wickham-Smith

A t the age of just 53, in 1856, the 5th Noyon Khutughtu,Danzanravjaa, lay dying at the monastery of Boyiniyin

Süme in southern Mongolia. His poetry, which had made himso popular among the ordinary people and so disliked by someof the clergy whom he blatantly mocked, now turned to a sav-age critique of the world. One of his most celebrated poems,from which this verse is taken, is called ‘The Way of the World’(Yertönts avgain jam khemeekh orshiv): over the poem’s 14 sec-tions, Danzanravjaa presents a commentary on the hypocrit-ical, deceitful, alluring, engaging, bizarre and rotten nature ofthe society in which he lived.

But Danzanravjaa was far from being a bitter monastic. Hislife and his work were, in some ways, the making of modernMongolia. He was born in the winter of 1803, in the Gobi Mer-gen district in what is today the Khuvsgul province of DornoGobi. His mother died very early in his life and he was raisedby his father, Dulduyitu, a wandering singer, with whom hewould go begging and singing. After their only horse wasattacked and eaten one night by a wolf, his father presentedhim to the monastery of Onggiyin Ghool, where he was placedunder the tutelage of the lama Ishdoniilundev. He was a pre-cocious and brilliant scholar and poet, writing verse from anearly age and excelling at his studies. In 1811, the local Nying-ma Buddhists proclaimed him the reincarnation of Jamyan-goyidubjaamsu, the 4th Noyon Khutughtu; this lama had beenmurdered by the Manchu overlords and it was only the inter-vention of the 10th Dalai Lama which now saved Danzanrav-jaa from the same fate.

Following the completion of his studies and, in 1821, the deathof his beloved father, Danzanravjaa dedicated himself to med-itation and to the poetic and educational projects for which heis best remembered. He determined to establish a temple forhimself and spent some time wandering the eastern Gobi todiscover the right site. He finally came upon a poor herdsman,named Balshinchoijoo, asleep in a field and took this as a signthat this was where the monastery should be built. Balshin-choijoo ended up building the monastery, named Khamar, act-ing as attendant and companion to Danzanravjaa; even today,it is his descendents who preserve the lama’s legacy.

Having established Khamar, Danzanravjaa set about creatinga place where not only religious and spiritual education wouldbe encouraged, but also more mundane, popular types of edu-cation. He set up a school where talented young childrencould, regardless of background or gender, receive a free gen-eral education, established Mongolia’s first museum, and setabout administering the entire district of the eastern Gobi, onmany occasions receiving representatives of foreign powers.In short, Danzanravjaa’s suzerainty was fixed by the effort andunderstanding with which he treated the monks within themonastery and the laypeople without.

All of the 80 or so buildings at Khamar were destroyed byChoibalsan’s purges during the 1930s. Over the last 15 yearsor so, a monk named Baatar has sought to re-establish two ofthe original structures.

In a valley just north of the temple complex, Danzanravjaabuilt Mongolia’s first theater and set up its first theater com-pany. He designed all the sets and costumes, wrote all thescripts and music and supervised and taught the actors howto perform. To give an idea of the complexity of these plays,his best-known drama, The Moon Cuckoo (Saran KökügeyinNamtar), took 120 performers several weeks to stage.

Despite his educational achievements, Danzanravjaa’s legacy– indeed, maybe the reason for his continuing popularityamong ordinary Mongolians – lies primarily in his poeticworks. He wrote poetry throughout his life, on an enormousrange of subjects, all executed with such linguistic subtletyand dexterity that one scholar, Walther Heissig, has comparedhis work with that of Goethe.

The quantity and quality of his works is such that it wouldbe impossible here to give an accurate overview. What canbe said, though, is that his work emphasizes love for the nat-ural world and for the vast expanses of the Gobi. His love ofhorses far surpasses that of the average Mongolian: he usesthe horse, and the vast distances of the Gobi, as a way of illus-trating the spiritual path of a Buddhist practitioner. His ownspiritual practice extended to long retreats in a specially-designed doorless ger. Moreover, his frequent references tohis lovers, to intimacy and to ecstasy, evoke similarities withwestern spiritual writers such as Jalaluddin Rumi or St Johnof the Cross.

Danzanravjaa is also often compared with the 6th Dalai Lama,Tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho, who also wrote poetry1 and whoalso lived what, on the surface, could be called a strangely dis-solute life for a Buddhist lama. That Danzanravjaa was a lamaof the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism meant that hisvows ruled out neither marriage nor alcohol: there are manystories concerning his love of alcohol and women – he tooktwo wives and often refers to himself as ‘the boozer’(sokhtakhu) – and these themes appear frequently in hispoems.

Of course, there is a tradition of maverick lama-poetsthroughout the Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhist world –Milarepa, for instance, Drukpa Kunley, the 6th Dalai Lama,Gendün Chophel and Chögyam Trungpa. Danzanravjaa’ssignificance lies in his ability to connect on many levels withthose around him. He enjoyed a certain respect within theestablishment – even though he made enemies by criticis-ing their hypocrisy and pretence and lack of spiritual effort– while, at the same time, he was loved by the laypeople whoappreciated his realism and compassion as much as his loveof wild parties.

The circumstances of his death are uncertain. There is a strongpossibility that he poisoned himself, so profoundly was he atodds with the establishment and with the world at large. Norcan murder be discounted. His awkward relationship with theManchus, primarily due to his opposition to their desire torule Mongolia, might well have been one reason for his mur-der. Other suspects included the widow of a local ruler, whomDanzanravjaa is supposed to have insulted. But whether hecommitted suicide, was murdered or whether he simply suc-cumbed to illness, we will never know. That he was only 53when he died, however, shows the great loss which Mongo-lian culture suffered and how much more he could haveachieved.

His attendant Balshinchoijoo lived on and took care of Khamarmonastery. Before he died, he established a family tradition,called takhilj, by which his descendents would preserve thehistory and achievements of Danzanravjaa and this traditionhas survived, through the Communist decades, to the presentday.

Despite his love of alcohol, Danzanravjaa continued to makea distinction between mindless and mindful behavior. Weshould give him the final word:

Strung out on booze and tobacco, The world is drunk, it takes no notice.

I’ll go my own way –Will you join with me?

Note

1. Whereas we know for sure that Danzanravjaa was the author of the

works ascribed to him, we cannot in any way be certain which, if

any, of those ascribed to the 6th Dalai Lama, are indeed his.

Simon Wickham-Smith

[email protected]

The way of the world

For further information please visit: http://danzanravjaa.org. Nyamgavaa’s biographical film

Dogshin Khutaghtin Sakhius (Ferocious Saint Lord of the Gobi) was released in 1998 while a

biography of Danzanravjaa by Michael Kohn is forthcoming. The translation of the first half

of the collected poetical works of Danzanravjaa can be accessed online at:

http://www.qamutiik.net/YNT.pdf.

TREES MOVED BY THE WIND

The branches of trees

Sway in the wind.

My mind moves

Clearer than moonlight.

Although I’ve left for the northern Khangai,

My mind remains behind.

Soaked will I be in mockery

For years to come.

Kindness and ancient true prayers

Have brought me benevolence.

Without delusion, all the days of my lives,

May I enjoy them both.

May I live

In the air of peaceful joy.

In the shade of a colorful bloom

May my loving mind be pacified.

P-OEM

Padmasambhava of Orgyen, I

Pray to you without respite.

People in this world suffer from

Protracted ignorance.

Paltry results of existence

Proceed apace, if we ignore them.

Protracted thought

Provides the breadth of one's mind with failure.

Pissing it up, you think of gulping down, all

Passion for the world is lost.

Pleasure it is, for sure, to meet the wife who, im-

Pulsive, screams out.

Propriety, when you experience a thing,

Prejudices its quality overmuch.

People with a breadth of understanding, more and more

Perceive what they see to be magic.

Petty nuisance, you might call me –

Plenty of years my mother has loved me.

Buddha I’ll be straightaway, by the

Power of meaningful Dharma.

This P-oem is the exhortation of Ravjaa, the rabid young kid

shaking the mendicant’s staff.

NOT BY INCONCEIVABLE STUPIDITY

Not by inconceivable stupidity,

Not by the way of worldly people,

Not by playing around with theories –

This wretched mind, wonderful as it is,

Quite unprepared, scorns the many

Instructions of Lama Vajradhara.

We shall abandon our careless manner,

Cavorting through nearby lands,

And, carefully, we shall follow his advice.

May we be the protector of beings.

A thief imposes his lifestyle,

Grasping here and there; but, unlike him,

May we not go astray in the world.


> The art of seductioncourtesy of Fries Museum, Leeuwarden




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> Books received

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> Review

Muhammed Hassanal i

One needs to have a firm grasp ofboth the current banking envi-

ronment and the interpretation ofIslamic commercial law to fully appre-ciate the challenges faced and the oppor-tunities offered by Islamic banks today.Both aspects are riddled with intricaciesand neither is uniform across nationalor cultural boundaries. Islamic Banking& Finance in South-East Asia attempts toprovide an overview of the banking envi-ronment and interpretation of Islamiccommercial law in Southeast Asia.

To understand contemporary Islamicbanking, one must know its past. Venar-dos presents an overview of Islamic his-tory, the spread of Islam in SoutheastAsia and lingering colonial legacies. Heprovides a synopsis of Islamic law as itrelates to commercial activity, exploresthe most common financial instru-ments traded by Islamic banks and out-lines salient challenges confrontingIslamic banks from both doctrinal andregulatory perspectives. He thendescribes the environment and opera-tion of Islamic banks in various South-east Asian countries.

The Koran and Sunna (ways of theProphet) form the basis of Islamic law.Both contain guiding ethical principles

from which legal doctrine must beextrapolated and developed; this processis a kind of ‘discovering’ of law that typ-ically takes into account prevailing lawsand customs. For example, Islamic lawprohibits riba (usury). Most Muslimjurists take a literalist stand againstusury, proclaiming that any interestcharged is not permitted, but they allowthe making of reasonable profits ongoods and services. Hence, as Venardoscorrectly points out, contemporaryIslamic banks must trade in real assetsrather than charge interest. This limitsthe bank’s ability to trade in other finan-cial instruments (such as futures) andrestricts its revenue streams.

Islamic law also prohibits gharar (gam-bling or excessive risk); thus Islamicbanks avoid futures and options as theyare seen as excessively risky. In this vein,Venardos narrowly portrays hedging asan instrument ‘to monopolize somecommodities’ and calls its use ‘the ille-gitimate objective for monopoly profit-ing’ (p.160). He does not consider hedg-ing from a micro-economic perspectivethat allows small and medium-sizedbusinesses to effectively compete in theglobal marketplace while mitigatingexchange rate risk.

The prohibition of charging interestforces Islamic Banks to either ‘sell’ tan-

gible goods or take equity positions inthe businesses they finance. Hence theyassume more risk than do conventionalbanks. Venardos emphasizes, to a fault,how Islamic banks provide convention-al banking services, yet he does not delveinto some of the services they providethat are similar to those provided by con-ventional mutual funds. A substantialpart of Islamic banking involves part-nerships formed in the course of financ-ing that are more reminiscent of devel-oping a portfolio of equity positions likethose of mutual funds.

Since the 1970s, Islam has been experi-encing a revival of sorts; Muslims areasserting their religious identity and aretrying to lead lives as worthy Muslims.This has partially fueled the demand forIslamic banking, as Venardos alludes toin his discussion of Islamic banking inIndonesia. However, the rise of increas-ingly extreme interpretations of Islamthreatens advances made by Islamicbanking in two main ways: the first is agrowing suspicion of anything Islamic innon-Muslim countries, especially in post-9/11 Western Europe and North Ameri-ca; another is the rise of literalist inter-pretations of Islamic law, which stifle thecreativity necessary to interpret com-mercial law that could be used to con-ceive novel financial instruments. Venar-dos should have mentioned these threats.

Islamic banks face several more chal-lenges, including assessing and regu-lating appropriate risk levels, establish-ing appropriate accounting practicesand providing mechanisms that createliquidity for assets held by Islamicbanks. Venardos describes regulatoryhurdles in Southeast Asia and whatbanks have done to overcome them. Healso addresses the difficulties of provid-ing useful banking services while stay-ing within Islamic commercial law sub-ject to a plurality of interpretations. Buthe focuses neither on agency risk and itsimpact on regulation nor on consumerperceptions of Islamic banks.

An overview of Islamic banking shouldexplore how an ideal Islamic bank pro-vides its customers the services theyneed while dealing with today’s com-mercial banking challenges. Venardosadequately describes the underlyingbasis for Islamic banks, but he does notdraw on the rich historical legacy ofMuslim commercial activity. For exam-ple, during medieval times, the Mus-lim empire circulated bimetalliccoinage. One gold dinar was generallyworth ten silver dirhams, but theexchange rate varied widely. What didtraders do to mitigate risk? How didthey achieve liquidity? More impor-tantly, what can today’s Islamic bankslearn from this history?

The book’s other shortcomings includefootnotes that refer to sources (such asUsmani, Braddell, Harvey and Partadi-reja) curiously unlisted in the bibliogra-phy. Conversely, the bibliography listsworks that are not referenced in the textand have little (if any) bearing on Islam-ic banking (such as The Khoja Case orSufism’s Many Paths). Moreover, the bib-liography is difficult to search as somereferences are out of alphabetical order.The text is not without typographicalerrors and cases of poor sentence struc-ture. In chapters eight and nine, entireparagraphs are repeated verbatim.

Venardos hints that Islamic banking hasthe potential to offer more, both interms of interpreting Islamic law andproviding financial services and instru-ments. But his book leaves the impres-sion that Islamic banks are just like con-ventional banks except in the differentwords either uses for ‘interest’. Theyprovide similar financial instrumentsand operate in the same way – or so thereader is left to believe. <

Muhammed Hassanali is a student of Islam-

ic studies in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

[email protected]

Islamic banking in Southeast Asia- Venardos, Angelo. 2005. Islamic Banking & Finance in South-East Asia: Its Development & Future. Singapore: World Scientific.

268 pp. ISBN 981-256-152-8 (paperback)



> Review

Kenn Nakata Ste f fensen

Two previous monographs estab-lished David Williams as the enfant

terrible of Japanese political studies.With his trademark iconoclasm and ele-gant prose, he provokes critical reflec-tion on the ethnocentrism and politicalbiases of dominant western views onintellectual and political history.

Kyoto School as politicalphilosophyThe book is organised into five partsin 12 chapters and an appendix withthe author’s translation of two texts byTanabe Hajime, whom he considersthe dominant figure of the KyotoSchool’s middle phase from 1928 to1946.1 The term ‘Kyoto School’ wascoined by Tosaka Jun to designate thegroup around Nishida Kitarm at KyotoImperial University. It dominatedJapanese philosophy from the 1920s,with all major thinkers belonging to ordefining themselves against it. Thefirst phase of the school is conven-tionally considered apolitical andmetaphysical in orientation.2 Chal-lenged by Kawakami Hajime’s Marx-ism, ‘the focal concern of the middlephase of the Kyoto School was politi-cal philosophy’ (p.176).

Williams focuses on four works byTanabe and four colleagues: ‘TheStandpoint of World History and Japanby Kmyama, Suzuki, Kmsaka and Nishi-tani’ and Tanabe’s ‘response to Hei-degger’s controversial rectoral addressof May 1933 that appeared in threeparts in the Asahi newspaper in theautumn of 1933; his secret lecture of1942 on the philosophy of co-prosper-ity spheres, which was part of Tanabe’sintellectual alliance with the ImperialNavy to resist Tojo’s policies, and Tan-abe’s magnum opus, The Logic of theSpecies, that appeared in 13 partsbetween 1934 and 1946’ (p.18). Thebook, however, goes far beyond mereexegesis and commentary on thesefour texts.

The emphasis is on Tanabe and, to alesser extent, Nishitani. Little is saidabout Kmyama, Suzuki and Kmsaka. Inchapters 8-11 Williams reads theattacks on the Kyoto School for itsalleged complicity with ultra-national-ism in the context of the debate onHeidegger’s relationship with the Naziregime, and exonerates both Heideg-ger and Tanabe. Rather than acting forthe military government, Tanabe andassociates were aligned with parts ofthe navy in a ‘struggle against Tojo’(Chapter 5). The concluding ‘mani-festo on the future of Japan studies’argues that ‘Japanology must begin allover again’ by returning to Max Weberand reading the Kyoto School liberat-ed from the ‘Allied gaze’. Their writ-ings should be read ‘not as someabsent-minded lapse from Zen Bud-dhism but as political thought in theclassic sense’ because ‘these Japanese

philosophers fashioned a vessel forJapanology to renew itself, to begin allover again’ (p.176).

Pacific War revisionismversus the Allied gazeWilliams confronts the ‘Allied ortho-dox’ intellectual history of 1930s and1940s Japan. This view has tended tosee the Kyoto School ‘as thinkers com-plicit with wartime nationalism’.3

There has also been a parallel currentin comparative philosophy and reli-gious studies, which ‘for decades pre-sented Nishida, Tanabe and Nishitanias essentially apolitical religiousthinkers’ (p.34), resulting in a lack of‘recognition that the Kyoto School alsoproduced a profound meditation onthe nature of politics, history and soci-ety in a world dominated by the West’(p.79).

If the Kyoto School has been ‘attackedfrom both the right and the left’5 sincethe 1930s, Williams’ defence defieseasy categorisation. Where GrahamParkes held that ‘To criticize the crit-ics, however, is not to condone thepolitical writings of the Kyoto Schoolthinkers’,6 Williams goes a step fur-ther by both criticising ‘the black leg-end of the Kyoto School’ (Chapter 7)and defending it as ‘liberal nationalist’in character (p.152). In doing so, hedeparts more radically from even therelatively sympathetic assessments ofTanabe in other recent studies, e.g.Goto-Jones’ inaugural volume in theLeiden Series in Modern East AsianPolitics and History.7

The main targets for his sometimesscathing criticism are the ‘so-calledprogressive intellectual historians whoserve under the neo-Marxist banner’(p.47) and ‘some of the most influen-tial Western students of modernJapanese religious thought’ (p.34). Hefinds both groups guilty of misrepre-senting the Kyoto School’s positionsbefore and during the Pacific War, butJames Heisig and other religious stud-ies scholars are seen in a morefavourable light than historians PeterDale and Harry Harootunian:

Unlike their neo-Marxist colleagues,these Western scholars did not abandonproper standards of research or theirhard-won understanding of Kyotothought. But there was an implicitendorsement of the reasoning behind thevictor’s justice meted out by the TokyoWar Crimes Tribunal. The impliedmoral simplicities – Allied virtue versusJapanese evil – are so morally satisfyingprecisely because they exploit the leastfair and most self-flattering comparisonpossible: our high ideals against theirbase conduct (p.34).

The weakness of ‘the religious para-digm’, according to Williams, is that‘for such critics, “politics” means nei-ther research on political institutionsnor the study of political philosophy

but something much narrower andless scientific: the ethical criticism ofwartime Japan from an Allied per-spective’ (p.154).

Global power imbalanceThe context in which Williams readsTanabe and associates is today’s ‘glob-al imbalance of power’ (p.9), which hefinds unacceptable because ‘uncon-tained power is unacceptable, no mat-ter how wisely or generously the hold-ers of that power may exercise it’ (p.7).He considers the book a contributionto ‘liberal opposition to the neo-conagenda’ (p.9) and to how ‘the rest ofthe world might be able to compelAmerica, peacefully, to ease the fettersof its global domination’ (p.8). LikeChalmers Johnson and the Kyotophilosophers, he sees himself as a‘loyal critic’ of his country’s foreignpolicy. Williams links his concernsover contemporary developments inthe US with the wartime Kyoto Schoolbecause he believes it holds resourcesnecessary for the ‘post-White world’that he is confident is dawning:

Among all non-White thinkers whohave dwelled on the nature and conse-quences of the planetary hegemony ofthe White West, Japanese philosophershave a unique place. They even pro-posed a cure for Western hegemony.Their insights are as unforgiving asthey are indispensable at this decisivehour in the destiny of the AmericanRepublic (p.4).

He elaborates ‘a post-nationalist visionof America’s post-White destiny withthe aid of Kyoto philosophy (p.xvii).For Williams, the relevance of theKyoto School and the purpose of hisanalysis of its political philosophy is tohelp ‘the achievement by non-Ameri-cans of mature subjectivity’ (p.11). A conspicuous silence is the relation-

ship of Kyoto philosophy to other bod-ies of thought, especially those broad-ly labelled ‘postcolonial theory’. Yetmany of its preoccupations overlapboth with those of Williams and theKyoto School. Postcolonial critiqueaims to theoretically and politicallyempower ‘subaltern’ subjects in a sim-ilar way to Williams’ preoccupationwith ‘post-White subjectivity’ and hispurpose of ‘nurturing, ex nihilo, ofagency itself’ (p.110), but he does notexplore the possible linkages.

Scholarship and propagandaWhile he ‘aims to stamp firmly on thepropagandist who pretends to be ascholar’ (p.15), the parts of his mono-graph that predict a ‘post-White’ futurefor the United States and the widerworld can also be considered propa-gandistic. Chapter 4 points out someserious flaws in Harootunian’s Over-come by Modernity, but it is not clearhow Williams distinguishes betweenscholarship and propaganda. The clos-est he comes to a definition is thestatement that ‘The academic defenceof this wartime discourse, a defencewhich is rife with bias and prejudice,persuasive definitions and valueclaims, does not qualify as scholarship’(p.4). If Harootunian’s obsession with‘fascism is the conceptual fallacy thatsinks this great galleon of a mono-graph’ (p.60), one might argue thatWilliams’ claims about the coming‘post-White world’ is his Achilles heel.If Harootunian is guilty of propagan-da for the ‘Allied orthodox’ interpreta-tion of the past, is Williams himselfnot propagandising for his imaginedutopian future?

Defending Japan’s Pacific War is a majorachievement for which the authormust be congratulated. A necessarilyselective review cannot do full justiceto it. It deserves a wide readership

The Kyoto School, American empireand the post-white world

- Williams, David. 2004. Defending Japan’s Pacific War: The Kyoto School Philosophers and Post-White Power. London and NewYork: Routledge Curzon. 238 pp. ISBN 0-415-32315-0

beyond Japan studies. Williams’ ‘Pacif-ic War revisionism, in the Western lib-eral mode’ (p.15) is uncompromising.He has ‘offered no quarter and takenno prisoners’ (p. xvii). His impas-sioned argument for his case and hisequally passionate attack on those hedisagrees with may upset some, buteven then it stimulates thought andcritical self-reflection. <

Notes

1. The two Tanabe texts are ‘The Philosophy

of Crisis or a Crisis in Philosophy: Reflec-

tions on Heidegger’s Rectoral Address’

(1933) and the secret lecture ‘On the Logic

of Co-prosperity Spheres: Towards a Phi-

losophy of Regional Blocs’ (1942).

2. Christopher S. Goto-Jones goes against

this convention when he argues that

Nishida’s early works contained elements

of a political philosophy. See Jones,

Christopher S. January 2003. ‘Ethics and

Politics in the Early Nishida: Reconsider-

ing Zen no Kenkyt’. Philosophy East & West

53-1.

3. Arisaka, Yoko. 1996. ‘The Nishida Enigma:

‘The Principle of the New World Order’

(1943)’. Monumenta Nipponica 51-1.

4. Townsend, Susan. ‘Japan’s New Order in

Asia, 1938-45: Rethinking Globalism’, p.2.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/iaps/SueArt

icle.pdf

5. Arisaka 1996, op.cit.

6. Parkes, Graham. July 1997. ‘The Putative

Fascism of the Kyoto School and the Polit-

ical Correctness of the Modern Academy’.

Philosophy East & West 47-3.

7. Goto-Jones, Christopher S. 2005. Political

Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto

School and Co-Prosperity. Routledge: Lon-

don and New York.

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

Doctoral student

Department of Political and International

Studies, SOAS, University of London.

[email protected]

THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN SOUTHEAST ASIA

A New HistoryEdited by Norman G. Owen

HAWAI‘I READER IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE CULTUREEdited by Victor H. MairNancy S. Steinhardt & Paul R. Goldin

HOUSE HOME FAMILY: Living and Being ChineseEdited by Ronald G. Knapp & Kai-Yin LoSpatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia's Vernacular Architecture

TALES FROM A CHARMED LIFE

A Balinese Painter ReminiscesHildred Geertz & Ida Bagus Madé Togog

MURÒJI: Rearranging Art and History at a Japanese Buddhist TempleSherry Fowler

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESSWWW.UHPRESS.HAWAII .EDU



> Review

In pursuit of inclusive democracy for a multi-ethnic state: Nepal at the crossroads

- Lawoti, Mahendra, 2005. Towards a Democratic Nepal: Inclusive Political Institutions for a Multicultural Society. New Delhi:Sage Publications, pp. 345. ISBN 0-7619-3318-2 (hard cover)

Alpo Rat ia

Nepal’s Maoist insurgency hasalready claimed 13,000 lives; the

country is in danger of becoming afailed state but the fluid political situa-tion could also open the way to democ-racy. Towards a Democratic Nepalsketches the socio-cultural factors andpolitical dynamics which have led totoday’s crisis. Author Mahendra Lawotithereafter assesses the alternatives, andmakes recommendations for reform-ing Nepal’s institutions and politicalculture.

Embedded in the Himalayas betweenIndia and China (Tibet), Nepal’s diffi-cult topography has helped create aremarkable ethnic and cultural mosaic.Nepal’s population of over 22m offi-cially includes 59 ethnic groups, tribesand castes; their members speak some100 different Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman languages, and practise adozen different religions. Since theGurkha conquest and unification ofNepal in 1769, upper caste, Khas-Nepalispeaking Hindu males have secureddominance in most spheres of society.Despite attempts at parliamentarydemocracy since 1951, Nepal continuesto suffer from political and economicunderdevelopment. The lack of demo-cratic consolidation has serious conse-quences for Nepal’s people.

Political exclusion of the majority, theresulting instability, and possible solu-tions have been frequent objects ofstudy for Nepal’s journalists and socialscientists since the 1990s. Some of themost promising writing has come fromKrishna Bhattachan and MahendraLawoti. The latter’s 1999 doctoral dis-sertation Democratic Domination was acritical study of Nepal’s constitution of1990 and its impact on the country’spopulation.

Aiming to advance democracy, Lawotisubsequently studied three topics: thecomposition of Nepali society and itscongruence with the state structure;people’s satisfaction with the state andits policies; and conflict management,democratisation and inclusive politicalinstitutions. For this he spent 19months in the field collecting data andinterviewing ethnic and politicalactivists. The resulting publication,Towards a Democratic Nepal reviewedhere, is essentially a bipartite mono-graph. The first part (pp.19-153) sketch-es the post-1990 political develop-ments and socio-cultural and legalfactors leading to today’s impasse,while the second part (pp.154-321) ismore prescriptive. It assesses differentmethods to further dialogue anddemocratisation, and suggests whatkind of constitution and political insti-tutions might best serve the needs ofNepal’s multiethnic population.

Exclusion and majoritarianinstitutionsDrawing upon Arend Lijphart’s world-wide comparisons (1999) of democra-cies and conflict management, Lawotinotes ‘Exclusion is not desirable in amulticultural polity because it perpetu-ates inequality and injustice and threat-ens to unleash large-scale ethnic vio-lence’ (p.21). The restoration ofdemocracy in Nepal in 1990 allowed dis-possessed ethnic groups and castes tovoice their grievances and aspirations.They were, however, excluded from par-ticipation in governance. The new con-stitution’s establishment of majoritari-an institutions (a non-proportionalelectoral system and unitary state struc-ture under a strong executive) and itsdiscriminatory articles (vis-à-vis lan-guage, religion, culture and gender)together ensured continued dominanceby the ‘CHHEM’ (Caste Hill Hindu EliteMale) minority, ie, the ‘Hill Brahmins

and Kshatriyas’ (Parbate Bahuns andChhetris) from western Nepal.

Lawoti’s ‘Integrated National Index ofGovernance, 1999’ (pp.104-105) revealsthe incidence of socio-cultural groupsin Nepal’s population and in positionsof influence (judiciary, parliament, civilservices and security forces elite, partycentral committees, etc). The CHHEconstituted 32% of the population, butCHHE males held 67% of influentialposts. In contrast the Dalits (‘untouch-able’ Hindus, 9% of the population)held 0%, the Madhesis (southern TaraiHindus and Muslims, 31%) held 11%,while the Newars (from the Kathman-du Valley, 6%) held 15%, and the otherTibeto-Burman speakers (Adibasi Jana-jati, 22%) held only 7% of influentialposts.

The exclusion of the majority from gov-ernance, discrimination in resource allo-cation and services, and mounting dis-satisfaction led to the radicalization ofpart of Nepal’s communist movementand the rise in 1996 of a Maoist insur-gency. The number of deaths directlyattributed to the low-intensity civil warmay be modest, but Lawoti’s ‘Prelimi-nary Cost and Benefit Analysis of theMaoist Insurgency’ (p.61) shows that thehuman cost, infrastructure destruction,and political and economic strain forthis developing country have indeedbeen high. Violence by other disaffect-ed ethnic/caste/regional groupings hasso far been limited, but Lawoti’s analy-sis suggests worse to come. The timeframe studied by the author ends withthe dissolution of parliament andresumption of direct rule by the palacein May 2002. Now we see that the gov-ernment’s effective jurisdiction hasshrunk to urban centres and the field ofoperations of its army, while much ofthe countryside is under the sway of theMaoists. A new development is the hes-

itant dialogue between government,political parties, ethnic groupings, andthe Maoists.

Democratic deliberation,inclusive governanceIn view of Nepal’s flawed state structure,civil war and fluid political situation,Lawoti declares ‘It has become impera-tive that major political institutionalreforms be carried out in Nepal to bringthe Maoists into mainstream politics, ifnot for other reasons’ (p.194). TheMaoists have repeatedly demanded aconstituent assembly to draft a new con-stitution. Lawoti favours this also, pro-vided the transition process is demo-cratic in line with Robert Dahl’s (1989)five crucial requirements: inclusion ofsocio-cultural groups, their effective par-ticipation, equality in voting, etc. Lawotiadds to this a conflated version of Krish-na Bhattachan’s four-step process(2003), now in three enabling steps: pre-liminary round table conferences, a con-stituent assembly, and popular initia-tives. If the Kathmandu-centric elitedoes not become sensitized to the griev-ances of marginalized groups, then itsopposition to major reforms risks beingoverwhelmed by ethnic mobilization– or by losses on the battlefield.

Part IV (pp.227-300) promises to be asignificant stimulus to political dis-course in Nepal. Here Lawoti comparesthe functioning of federal institutionsand practices worldwide in multicultur-al societies (Switzerland, India, etc), andthen advocates ethnic federalism forNepal. This would entail a multilevel,asymmetrical federalism with mecha-nisms such as a bicameral parliamentincluding a powerful House of Nation-alities, plus territorial and non-territori-al units, sub-autonomy within autono-my, and self-determination for regions.Autonomy would be granted primarilyon the basis of ethnicity/caste, second-arily on that of language. Whethergroups are concentrated or not within aregion would determine whether theycan form a territorial unit. Territorialunits are recommended tentatively for16 socio-cultural groups (Limbu, Magar,Maithili, etc), non-territorial units for tengroups (Dalits, women, etc.), and sub-autonomy with special privileges foreight groups (Raute, Walung, etc.). Fur-ther measures to protect small minori-ties would include proportional electoralmethods plus affirmative action andreservation policies, and anchoringminority rights protection in the consti-tution and reforming the Constitution-al Court to better reflect Nepal’s multi-ethnic society. The book ends with a pleathat during these exceptional times, theopportunities for accommodation andpower sharing must be seized.

In conclusionTowards a Democratic Nepal is an impor-tant book which should be of interest tothree different readerships: first, schol-ars in Himalayan, South Asian and

development studies; second, develop-ment agencies and friends of Nepal, butmost of all Nepal’s own civil society, pro-gressive politicians, policy makers, andjournalists. The monograph is well-writ-ten and carefully reasoned. Printingerrors are few. Researchers will appre-ciate the extensive up-to-date bibliogra-phy (pp.322-336), even though the indexis useful only for authors and politicalinstitutions. The author’s expertise isapparent in his informative analysis ofthe rise of Nepal’s Maoist movement(pp.38-64), of Nepal’s socio-culturalcleavages (pp.87-102), and in his trench-ant critique (pp.113-138 ff.) of the coun-try’s constitution.

Lawoti’s book presents a wealth of con-stitutional and institutional reform pro-posals to stimulate research, thinking,and action. The author draws uponmany political scientists’ theories ofdemocracy and institutional models,some of which he seeks to creativelyadapt. Moreover, he makes use of cross-cultural empirical studies, because ‘Theaim in Nepal should be to learn from theexperience of other societies and refinethe public policies to suit the local situ-ation’ (p.284). Recognising that situa-tion’s fluidity, the author takes a meas-ured and flexible approach. He makesclear which reforms he prefers and why,but other alternatives are acknowledged,and their sequence, relative advantagesand viability are discussed against thebackdrop of Nepal’s realpolitik.

Certain omissions should stimulate fur-ther exploration. Because Nepal is oneof the world’s poorest countries, theproblem of capital accumulation prob-ably needs to be solved before the cre-ation and operation of a complex net-work of federal institutions becomesfeasible. The promotion of tolerance,development of a democratic culture,training of qualified administrators,and standardisation of regional lan-guages all take time. These may also beprerequisites to the efficient function-ing of federalism in a diverse multieth-nic state. Hopefully Lawoti will addressthese issues in his future writings. Thestakes are high, and the degree of inclu-sive democracy achieved will dependupon the level of understanding ofNepal’s leaders and the evolving balanceof political forces. <

Alpo Ratia is affiliated with the University

of Helsinki. His articles in Himalayan, Indo-

Tibetan and Buddhist studies have

appeared in periodicals in Asia and Europe,

including the Tibet Journal and Acta Orien-

talia. He served as editor of Ensimmäiset

kansat (First Peoples) quarterly, and is cur-

rently helping plan the 6th Asia – Europe

Peoples’ Forum to be held in Helsinki in

September 2006.

A semi-annual journal dedicated to thestudy and preservation of Asian traditions

This year’s issues include articles on:

*Silkworms and Consorts in Nara Japan*Bridal Laments in Rural Hong Kong*Urban Adaption of Paharia in Rajshahi*Hmong-American Oral Culture Traditions*Cross-dressing, Gender, and Sex

Subscription rates for two issues/year: Institutions US $40.00, Individuals US $22.00Contact address: Editor, Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan University

18 Yamazato-cho, Showa-ku, 466–8673 Nagoya, Japane-mail: [email protected]

ASIAN FOLKLORE

STUDIES



> Review

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ] [ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Social Science Research on Southeast AsiaRecherche en sciences humaines sur l’Asie du Sud-Est

ARTICLES

Tending the Spirit’s Shrine: Kanekes and Pajajaran in West JavaRobert Wessing & Bart Barendregt

L’Enchaînement des appartenances: dossier coordonné par Guillaume Rozenberg

Des gardiens des confins aux bâtisseurs des plaines: le parcours d’une population tibéto-birmane du LaosVanina Bouté

Le nouveau partage du monde. Pauvreté et dépendance dans les marges du Yunnan (Chine)Stéphane Gros

Urang Banten Kidul (gens de Banten Sud): entre autorité coutumière et souveraineté nationale en IndonésieÉric Bourderie

L’expression du particularisme arakanais dans la Birmanie contemporaineAlexandra de Mersan

REVIEW ARTICLES

Women’s War. An Update of the Literature on Iban TextilesMichael Heppell

Around Balinese Music. Catherine Basset & Michael Tenzer

NOTE

Les missionnaires et la botanique: l’exemple du père Urbain Faurie en Extrême-OrientChantal Zheng & Zheng Shunde

SALES & SUBSCRIPTIONSEDISUD, La Calade, RN 7, 13090 Aix-en-Provence, France

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Moussons is a joint publication of IRSEA and LASEMA

NUMBER 8 NOW AVAILABLE

Caro l ina Ivanescu

A lthough Cambodia is conventionally described as aTheravada Buddhist country, scholars trying to define

the boundaries of its religious life more accurately see itas a syncretism of animism, Brahmanism and Buddhism.History, Buddhism and New Religious Movements in Cambodiaoffers an overview of the country’s religious life, using awide range of perspectives to address the question: ‘Whatis particularly Cambodian about Cambodian religion?’

Chapters explore national identity, the present religiousnessof the Cambodian diaspora, 19th century architecture and indi-vidual contemporary religious identities. The thematic vari-ety and the authors’ knowledge makes this book an importantasset to Khmer studies, religious studies and the study of con-temporary Buddhism; it is a valuable contribution to theanthropological study of religious phenomena within the larg-er context of human interaction and the division of socialprestige.

Most of the studies compiled in this volume address themultiple ways in which Cambodian religious ideas and prac-tices relate to concepts and institutions that have given andgive shape to Cambodia as a social and political body. Theeditors assume that Buddhism is not only a part of thechanging society but the matrix of change itself, a dynam-ic identity-forming force that triggers social interaction andalteration. While the book is about various aspects of reli-gious practice, it also presents Cambodian society in its cul-tural and social complexity, focusing on historical aspectsof religion, iconography and current political and socialtraits reflecting or influenced by religious imprints. Rich

in information on symbolic aspects of religious life, the textoffers a well-documented account of current tendencies andlocal trends, and introduces some of the personal cults ofpower.

The chapter ‘Making a religion of the nation and its language:the French protectorate (1863-1954) and the Dhammakay’ byPenny Edwards evaluates French colonial influence over Cam-bodian institutions and religion’s role in the gradual creationof a nation from the 1900s to the 1930s. The object of purebelief became the Khmer nation and its symbol, the Khmerlanguage. The process of shaping Khmer identity around adistinct language, ethos, culture, nation and a ‘distinctive wayof being a Buddhist’ (p.41) was, Edwards concludes, a productof 19th century cultural politics.

While Khmer language became the nation’s symbol in the dis-course of cultural and political spheres of influence, the stat-ue of the Leper King became, symbolically, the nation’s body(see Ashley Thompson). Just like the Buddha’s body corre-sponds to the samsaric world, the king’s body standsmetonymically for the physical territory of his kingdom.National and social identity, in material form, can be wor-shipped, taken care of, forgotten and then remembered, dis-placed, mutilated. Symbols work most effectively – fulfil theirmeaning – in rituals, and rituals bond individual members ofthe community, giving shape and common experience to theirgroup identity.

Once national identity is formed, its expression can be foundin the religious rituals of the spirit cult of Khleang Moeung,described by Teri Yamada from her encounter in Long Beach,California. The reconstruction of traditional culture is vital to

diaspora, which they achieve by practicing, through their reli-gion and public cultural events, the traditional rituals that serveas culturally unifying symbolic systems. Satisfying the indi-vidual’s need to know and actualise his own roots satisfies thenation’s need for a stable foundation on which its own iden-tity can be constructed.

Personal identity, social belonging and national pride allmingle with religious symbols and rituals to convey stablelayers of meaning. In order to build new structures the oldones must first be transformed, whether in their outer mate-rial expression or in their inner layers of meaning. A stablebalance between the old tradition and the need for changecan serve as a base on which to build national or personalidentity. Continuity, being in touch with one’s own culturalroots and a sense of belonging to a community are humanneeds met through cultural and social interaction and in thelayered symbolism of rituals. Religion, such as Buddhismin Cambodia, plays an important role in preserving the frag-ile continuity between the past and the present’s need forchange. <

Carolina Ivanescu studied cultural anthropology at ELTE University

in Budapest. Her interests include religion, the relationship between

myth and symbol, the anthropology of tourism and pilgrimages and

cultural utopias. She is currently preparing a PhD thesis on

transcultural religious identities.

[email protected]

Khmer identity: a religious perspective- Marston, John and Guthrie, Elisabeth, eds. 2004. History, Buddhism and New Religious Movements in Cambodia. Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 260 pp., ISBN 0-8248-2868-2 (paperback)


> Review

Dynamics of social inequality in Vietnam- Philip Taylor, ed. 2004. Social Inequality in Vietnam and the Challenges to Reform. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian

Studies, 392 pp., ISBN 981-230-275-1 (soft cover) 981-230-254-9 (hard cover)

Phuong An Nguyen

After nearly two decades of reform, Vietnam today enjoys rel-atively fast and steady economic growth. Increasingly lib-

eral social, cultural, and economic environments are conduciveto integration into the world economy, encourage foreign directinvestment, and allow citizens to move both within and beyondnational borders. All induce further economic growth andimprovement in the Vietnamese standard of living. However,an apparent, less-desired effect of the market economy in Viet-nam has been social inequality, which is visibly on the rise buthas been partially overlooked by social scientists and insuffi-ciently addressed by the socialist state and aid agencies.

Philip Taylor’s edited volume Social Inequality in Vietnam andthe Challenges to Reform thus provides insightful reading, par-ticularly as it offers viewpoints from both local Vietnameseand overseas scholars. Authors of the 11 chapters cover mostaspects of social inequality, from the urban-rural divide andinter-ethnic and gender inequalities to inequality among socialclasses. Many of these issues have been discussed before, butonly incompletely and from the perspectives of governmen-tal institutions and international agencies whose work focus-es on ‘development’.

Following Philip Taylor’s introductory chapter, which providesan excellent overview of social inequalities, the first two chap-ters address the political and economic aspects of Vietnam’sreform process. Vo Tri Thanh and Pham Hoang Ha’s chapterserves as background reading for what follows, while DavidKoh’s analysis of Vietnam’s recent political developments pres-

ents considered thought on the future of the Vietnamese Com-munist Party (VCP) given its position as the sole political party.It is not a new discovery that political dynamics affect socialinequality and, conversely, that social inequality can challengeand even topple political systems. But Koh demonstrates howan awareness of this dynamic has been driving the VCP lead-ership to improve the efficiency and accountability of the partyand its top-ranking personnel in order to satisfy populardemands for good governance and consolidate the regime’slegitimacy. At the same time, as governance is increasinglymeritocratised, political capital will gradually lose its value,especially in enabling people to attain elite jobs, tap into lim-ited resources and accumulate power and wealth. However,as Jee Young Kim indicates later in her chapter, under the cur-rent conditions of the market economy in Vietnam, it is notyet clear whether social, political or human capital will be themost important in enabling people to gain opportunities. Ina chapter focusing on a small ethnic Muong village, Tran ThiThu Trang asserts that those who possess social and politicalpower continue to excel economically, widening the econom-ic gap among villagers.

Other chapters collectively proffer a multifaceted depiction ofissues and realities of social differentiation and disparitiesamong social groups and across regions and locales. SteffanieScott and Truong Thi Kim Chuyen demonstrate that despiterecent poverty reduction programmes, the disparities betweenrural and urban, lowland and upland areas, between ethnicgroups, and between agricultural and non-agricultural sectorshave all increased. Nonetheless, while socio-economic differ-entiation can potentially cause conflict between regions and

between ethnic groups, it opens up opportunities for increasedinter-regional interactions (for example, through migration)and development initiatives.

Vu Quoc Ngu and Philip Taylor draw attention to institu-tional interventions and local people’s actions to redress spe-cific aspects of inequality. Be it the improvement of livingconditions, educational attainment, or access to land andinfrastructure, state policies and development agencies donot always bring the intended results. Often, local people’sactions and initiatives are more effective. Underlying this isthe problem of assumption: state and development agenciesassume a loose definition of ‘poverty’ and impose povertyreduction policies that do not always suit local circum-stances. A lack of connection to a locality in formulating andimplementing policies, exacerbated by poor performanceand corruption on the part of local officials, might result ina lack of support, discontent and even violent protests fromlocal residents, as Nguyen Van Suu demonstrates in hischapter. Even in contemporary literature, the gap betweenagents of development and their ideals on the one hand andrealities of peasant life on the other are clearly evident. Mon-tira Rato argues that the reason for this gap is that writersare often urban-based, middle-class and detached from thepeasant way of life.

Another form of social inequality in present-day market-ori-ented Vietnam is unequal access to consumption and recre-ation, which express aspirations for higher social status andconfirm its attainment. The two chapters by Nghiem LienHuong and Catherine Earl, respectively, demonstrate thatwhether it is rural young women drawn to Hanoi to work ingarment factories or educated migrant women in Ho ChiMinh City, they all have in common a liking for fashionableclothes, cosmetics, and a desire for leisurely urban lifestyles.Created by the popular media, the image of the urbanwoman who can afford recreation and travel is both attrac-tive and impressive; hence many women and/or their fam-ilies are prepared to put their resources into attaining andshowing it off.

Although the uneven and inconsistent use of section head-ings throughout this volume gives it the appearance of a ratherrushed compilation of presentations straight from the 2003Vietnam Update conference, this collection of papers makesfor a useful and stimulating read for researchers and anyoneinterested in present-day Vietnam. Significantly, it also callsattention to the need for further, more coherent and compre-hensive research on the dynamics of social inequality and con-sequent social phenomena, such as class formation, in a glob-alising Vietnam. <

Phuong An Nguyen is affiliated with the University of Leeds and has

published on the impact of globalisation and marketisation on urban

youth in post-reform Vietnam.

[email protected]

[email protected]



The 13th ASEFUniversityCross-cultural Perspectives on the InternationalLegal Order in the 21st Century

Call for Applications | Leiden, the Netherlands | 2-14 July 2006

The Asia-Europe Foundation, in cooperation with Leiden University and the

International Institute for Asian Studies, is organising the thirteenth edition of

the ASEF University, a two-week intensive academic enrichment programme

for promising university students. ASEF University aims to broaden horizons

and deepen insights into contemporary international issues and their

significance for Asia and Europe in a multi-cultural setting.

Practical informationThe ASEF University,including accommodations,materials and provisions, isoffered free of charge tosuccessful applicants.Students are expected toshoulder all travel-relatedexpenses (including airfare,travel insurance, airporttaxes and visa). However, anominal travel supplementwill also be provided.

This year’s programme, composed of lectures andworkshop sessions, will discuss the theoretical backgroundof international law as well as major developments in theinternational legal order. Students will also reflect on therole, possibilities and challenges for the ASEM states. HEJudge Owada (Member of the Court, International Court ofJustice) will deliver the keynote speech.

Students aged 28 and below preferably in their finalundergraduate year or first graduate year are invited toapply for the 13th ASEF University. The programme wouldgenerally benefit students of international law,international relations, international economics andbusiness, political science, social science, Asian studiesand European studies. To ensure the quality andinteraction, the class will be limited to 40 students.

Inquiries

Asia-Europe Foundation

People-to-People Exchange

Valerie Remoquillo

31 Heng Mui Keng Terrace

Singapore 119595

T: +65.6875.9715

F: +65.6872.1206

[email protected]

Application guidelines may be downloaded from www.asef.org. All applications must reach ASEF by 19 April 2006. Results will be announced on 28 April 2006.

For more information, visit: www.asef.org or www.iias.nl/au13


> Review

- Johnson, Derek and Mark Valencia, eds. 2005. Piracy in Southeast Asia: Status, Issues, and Responses. Singapore: InternationalInstitute of Asian Studies (Leiden) and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. 174 + xx pp. ISBN: 981-230-326-X (hardcover), 981-230-276-X (paperback)

Piracy in Southeast Asia

Stefan Ek lö f

Over the past decade piracy has re-emerged as a securityconcern for international shipping, particularly in South-

east Asia. With around 45% of the world’s reported attacks,the region is frequently referred to as ‘pirate-infested’, and lastyear the Joint War Committee of Lloyd’s of London declaredthe Malacca Straits a high-risk area, a term usually reservedfor war zones. In recent years the scourge of piracy in South-east Asia has attracted considerable attention, not only fromgovernment and security officials, but from scholars aroundthe world.

Piracy in Southeast Asia: Status, Issues, and Responses is the firstpublication in the IIAS/ISEAS Series on Maritime Issues andPiracy in Asia. Bringing together eight rather eclectic paperson piracy in contemporary Southeast Asia, and written byprominent scholars in the field – several of whom readers ofIIAS Newsletter will recognise from the theme on maritimepiracy in no. 36 last year – the book aims to identify the mainpillars of a future agenda for research on modern piracy inAsian waters.

Adam Young first addresses the longer historical and cultur-al background to the recent surge in Southeast Asian piracy,as well as the problem of applying an essentially Europeanconcept such as ‘piracy’ to Southeast Asia. This is followed byCaptain P. Mukundan of the International Maritime Bureau(IMB)’s discussion of the IMB’s role in the fight against pira-cy, especially in relation to, on the one hand, the commercialinterests his bureau represents and, on the other, the region’sgovernments – many of which are less than happy about theinternational attention piracy has gained due to informationpublished by the IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre in KualaLumpur.

The geopolitics of piracy?Gerard Graham Ong and Mark Valencia then discuss the pos-sible nexus between piracy and terrorism, albeit from differ-ent perspectives, with Valencia questioning Ong’s conflationof the two issues. A second chapter by Valencia describesregional and international efforts taken to combat piracy, andobstacles to their efficient implementation. In chapter six,Greg Chaikin tries to understand the past decades’ surge inpiracy against the background of developments in maritimesecurity and international maritime law, including the effectsof the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS) and the extension of maritime sovereignty andjurisdiction by littoral states. Chaikin also discusses Japan’srole in fostering regional co-operation to combat piratical activ-ity. Chapter seven by Indonesia’s former ambassador-at-largefor maritime affairs, Hasjim Djalal, describes regional andinternational efforts to combat piracy, and is valuable as itrelates piracy to the many other challenges facing Indonesia’sunder-equipped naval forces, including illegal fishing, the

threat of maritime terrorism and illicit traffic in drugs, armsand migrants. In the conclusion the editors bring the issuestogether and lay out a path for future research, pointing to the‘geopolitics of piracy’ and its criminology, as well as the pos-sible link between piracy and maritime terrorism.

Most of the chapters were originally written for the first work-shop on piracy in Asia organised by the International Insti-tute for Asian Studies and the Centre for Maritime Researchof the University of Amsterdam, held in Amsterdam in 2003.They thus reflect an early, to some extent even preparatorystage in the process of developing more substantial researchon the issue. Today, research on contemporary Asian piracyhas made significant headway, and we are already beginningto anticipate the answers to several of the questions posed bythe editors in the conclusion of Piracy in Southeast Asia. For

example, thanks to the work of Eric Frécon and Caroline Liss,we now know a good deal about the criminology of piracy –the who, where, how and why of the perpetrators. It is, by andlarge, a sadly familiar and not very romantic story of sociallyand economically disadvantaged young men making the mostof criminal opportunities in fast-changing and socially unsta-ble regions, such as Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago or theSouthern Philippines, characterised by great disparities andweak law enforcement.

The possible nexus between piracy and terrorism has beenwidely studied and discussed in recent years by both academicsand security officials, and is the subject of the second volumein the IIAS/ISEAS Series on Maritime Issues and Piracy, edit-ed by Gerard Ong, due out in early 2006. The general con-sensus, however, seems to be that although the threat of a mar-itime terrorist attack – whether against cargo or passengervessels or land-based targets using ships as floating bombs –should not be disregarded, it is not imminent and may havebeen exaggerated in the wake of 11 September 2001 and theOctober 2002 suicide attack on the French supertanker Lim-burg off Yemen.

Conflicting prioritiesWhat, then, about research on the ‘geopolitics of piracy’? Per-haps this is the area of most relevance today, not only forSoutheast Asia but for the international maritime communi-ty as a whole. However, several questions identified by John-son and Valencia regarding short-term responses, long-termstrategies, and the role of different countries in combatingpiracy are rather narrowly policy-oriented, and lacking in the-

oretical sophistication, seem less satisfying from an academ-ic perspective. Focusing on the ‘geo-politics of piracy’ also riskstaking attention from other, more pressing concerns in mar-itime security and international relations. Largely thanks tothe work of the IMB, and especially since the Piracy Report-ing Centre was launched in 1992, piracy and the armed rob-bery of commercial vessels has been in the limelight – at inter-national forums, among academics, and in the media.However, from the point of view of the two largest littoral statesin Southeast Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines, piracyremains a minor maritime security issue – if a security issueat all – compared to problems such as unsettled maritime bor-ders, illegal migration, smuggling, illegal fishing and envi-ronmental degradation.

Although neighbouring countries and interested parties suchas the international shipping industry may recognise the legit-imacy of Indonesian and Philippine concerns, their prioritiesreflect fundamentally different views of the high seas and ofthe rights and obligations of governments and maritime lawenforcement authorities. Essentially, the conflict boils downto the 400-year-old discussion of Mare Liberum vs. MareClausum – the principle of freedom for all on the high seas vs.the right of governments to exercise jurisdiction over outly-ing oceans and exploit its natural resources. Political, socialand economic developments since 1945 – including decolo-nization, the expansion of maritime sovereignty by coastalstates, increasing competition over maritime resources, thegrowth of maritime traffic and the rise of non-traditional secu-rity threats including trafficking in goods and people and inter-national terrorism – have made the controversy more press-ing than ever since the turn of the 18th century.

Against this background, a comprehensive research agendafor the future should comprise not only the ‘geopolitics of pira-cy’ but the ‘geopolitics of maritime security’ as a whole. Whatare the main challenges to maritime security from the per-spective of different actors and why are they seen as impor-tant? How do larger – national, regional as well as global –processes of economic, social and political change affect mar-itime security? Who are the main actors that strive to close orlimit the freedom of the oceans and what are their motives?What are the advantages and risks of maintaining the princi-ple of freedom of navigation on the seas? What effect will thedifferent moves to close the seas have on global security, tradeand the environment? To develop such a research agenda,involving both perspectives from Southeast Asia and the restof the world, is the real challenge for the future. <

Stefan Eklöf holds a PhD in history from Lund University, Sweden,

and currently teaches Asian Studies at the Centre for Asian Studies

at Göteborg University. He is author of Pirates in Paradise: A Modern

History of Southeast Asia’s Maritime Marauders (Copenhagen: NIAS

Press 2006).

[email protected]


Lloyd’s of London has declared the Malacca Straits a high-risk area,

a term usually reserved for war zones


> ASEF/Alliance

ASEF-Alliance Workshop5-7 January 2006Singapore

Mika Toyota , Ani ta Böcker

and E l speth Gui ld

Odd as it may seem, the movement of pensioners acrossinternational borders is on the rise in both Asia and

Europe. While there is a growing literature on this topic inEurope, particularly on intra-EU movement, the trend in Asiahas only just begun to receive academic attention. The work-shop brought together scholars from East and Southeast Asiaand Europe, to review experiences in Europe, explore devel-opments in Asia, and deepen our general understanding ofthe new migration trend through comparison. Seventeenpapers were presented, covering pensioners who migrated asa result of reunification policies (Russian Jews to Germany);retired labour migrants who moved back to their home coun-tries (Turkish and Moroccan elderly from Europe); and mostsignificantly, pensioners from wealthy countries seeking a bet-ter retirement life (Japanese to Southeast Asia, Singaporeansto Australia, Europeans to southern Europe).

It’s not just about ageingThe workshop opened with presentations by demographerswho identified the root cause of pensioners’ mobility. In coun-tries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the pace of ageingis even faster than it has been in most European countries.In Japan, for example, the proportion of the population aged65 and over is projected to rise from 19% in 2005 to 28% in2025. While more people are getting older, fewer elderly livewith their children. This trend began in Europe, but wealth-ier Asian countries are quickly catching up: in Japan, the per-centage of persons aged 65 and over living with children fellfrom 77% to 52% between 1970 and 1997; in South Korea,from over 80% in 1980 to 49% in 2000. There are many rea-sons for this: pensioners today have fewer children, fewerdaughters-in-law see it as an obligation to look after the eld-erly, and national pension schemes – though far from gen-erous – make it possible for the elderly to live independent-ly, all of which created more potentially mobile pensioners.With the baby boomer generation approaching retirementage, the number of migrant pensioners is likely to increasein the coming years.

Researchers from other disciplines provided more nuancedanalysis. One of the workshop’s insights was that pensioners’mobility in both Asia and Europe must be understood in rela-tion to state policies and the commodification of elderly care.Legal experts from Europe reviewed how the mobility of pen-sioners and EU social security regulations have interacted overrecent decades: increasingly unified EU laws facilitated mobil-ity, which resulted in new cases demanding further changesin regulations. This process is not over: though pensionerscan move freely between member states, considerable legaland policy gaps still remain. By comparison, national bordersin Asia are much less permeable, though both sending andreceiving countries have been active in promoting the move-ment of pensioners. In 1986, the Japanese government pro-posed the Silver Columbia Plan to build towns and villages forJapanese pensioners in Australia (though the programme

never materialised because of opposition in Australia), whilethe Japanese Long Stay Foundation was set up in 1992 to facil-itate ‘long-stay’ tourism abroad. On the receiving side, manyAsian countries see the coming of foreign pensioners as anopportunity to restore local economies after the Asian eco-nomic crisis, and have launched programmes to promote it.In Malaysia, under the ‘Malaysia My Second Home’ pro-gramme, foreign retirees receive five-year multiple entry visasonce they deposit a minimum of RM 100,000 (about€22,000) in a Malaysian bank account, or if their monthlyincome exceeds RM 7,000 (€1,550). The Philippines, Thai-land and Indonesia have also launched similar schemes bycreating special visa categories for retirees.

The commodification of care is likewise crucial in facilitat-ing pensioners’ migration in both Asia and Europe. InEurope, private insurance companies have been encourag-ing pensioners to move, while viewing pensioners as cus-tomers of care services has become a principle underlyingthe unification of EU social security policies. In Asia, thelack of a common legal framework and the larger disparityin income levels between countries makes commodificationof care an even more potent driving force behind mobility.The ‘Malaysia My Second Home’ programme was drivenlargely by the over-capacity of private hospitals resultingfrom the privatisation of medical care and the middle class’ssudden loss of buying power after the financial crisis. TheThai government, aiming to position Thailand as SoutheastAsia’s health tourism capital, has reached out to work withthe private health care sector. The differences and similari-ties between Asia and Europe in the institutional contextsof pensioner movement clearly show social security to be akey issue, a major policy concern worldwide.

Manipulators or victims?It is clear that pensioners migrate because of differences inincome levels and purchasing power between their own andother countries. But how exactly do the elderly make the deci-sion to migrate (sometimes to a place where they have neverlived)? What does it mean to them to migrate to a new coun-try where they cannot, at such a late stage of life, communi-cate in their own language? The picture becomes complexwhen we look at individual stories; seeing migrant pension-ers as either manipulators of state policies or victims of insuf-ficient social security in the home country can be simplistic.For some, migration is an escape from hardship, for othersthe fulfillment of a lifelong dream; some suffer from isolationin the new country, others paradoxically improve their familyrelations as a result of moving away; some prefer short stays,others are ready to die in the new place. The movement of pen-sioners is also a gendered phenomenon, though the genderbias seems to be more salient in Asia than in Europe. Forexample, a high percentage of single males is found amongThailand’s Japanese elderly.

A number of papers also pointed to the importance of classdivisions. In both Europe and Asia, pensioners’ migration wasinitially an option for high income groups, though this haschanged recently. Different groups appear to have differentincentives and behaviour. Among the Japanese retirees, forexample, the affluent chose the best place to live after travel-ing to various countries, while low-income earners moveddirectly to Southeast Asia out of economic need. In Europe,affluent British or German pensioners move to places such asTuscany, while the less well-off go to Spain and, increasingly,to countries outside the EU. Different income groups alsorelate differently to the destination community. Affluentmigrants seem to be better integrated, both because they aremore likely to speak foreign languages and because they tend

to live in individual houses dispersed across communities,rather than living in congregated residences (for example,gated compounds) that are more popular with middle-incomegroups.

One thing countries and continents appear to have in com-mon is the pendulum pattern of pensioner mobility. To enjoythe best weather, to stretch their pensions or to keep in touchwith their families, many pensioners move back and forthbetween their native and adopted countries. This was just oneway the workshop showcased the elderly to be anything butpassive. The elderly are active agents: navigating existing insti-tutions, pushing for policy changes, generating new life stylesand creating new transnational communities.

Social implications What does the increasing mobility of pensioners mean tothe receiving communities? The coming of pensioners cer-tainly brings in new income, which may improve nationalhealth services and in turn spread services to the larger pop-ulation. Unlike tourists, migrant pensioners remain in acommunity and fuel the local economy instead of spendingon foreign-owned hotels and tour operators. But there isalso evidence that the migration of pensioners siphons offmedical resources in the receiving community and has neg-ative impacts on health equity, particularly for lower class-es and rural populations. The loss of skilled health profes-sionals from the public medical sector can be significant.In Europe, too, as pensioners tend to migrate to certainregions, they may strain already limited resources. Othersocial implications include the globalisation of the healthcare work force and the emergence of a transnational careindustry. At the local level, some migrant pensioners workas volunteers in the host society, which not only keeps themhealthy but helps integrate their ethnic communities(including non-pensioners) into mainstream society. Someworkshop participants were critical of the congregated res-idential pattern common to migrant pensioners in Europeand Asia, believing it reflects and reinforces unequal inter-national relations.

The three-day workshop concluded with a field trip to Penang,Malaysia, where participants observed retirement communi-ties first-hand. Throughout the workshop, lively comparativediscussions revealed that the subject has still greater theoret-ical potential. Though we all enjoyed the meeting, we depart-ed quite humbled by the holes in our knowledge. Our pendu-lum was swinging: we were migrating back home to morework. <

Mika Toyota

Asia Research Institute

National University of Singapore

Anita Böcker and Elspeth Guild

Centre for Migration Law

Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

The Netherlands

Established migration theories have long asserted international migration to be a venture ofthe young and healthy. The workshop ‘Pensioners on the Move’, however, focused on anothergroup exhibiting quite different migratory behaviour: they do not move from low-income tohigh-income countries but vice-versa; they don’t move to work, but to not work. This mobilityis neither tourism nor migration, but shares elements of both.

courtesy of National

Geographic

Pensioners on the move: social security and trans-border retirement migration in Asia and Europe


> ICAS5

The European Alliance for Asian Stud-

ies is a cooperative framework of

European institutes specializing in

Asian Studies. Its partners are:

NIAS - Nordic Institute of Asian StudiesDirector: Dr Jørgen Delman

Leifsgade 33 DK 2300 Copenhagen S,

Denmark

T +45-35-32 9500

F +45-35-32 9549

[email protected]

www.nias.ku.dk

IFAInstitut für Asienkunde

Director: Dr Günter Schucher

Rothenbaumchaussee 32,

D-20148 Hamburg, Germany

T +49-40-428 8740

F +49-40-410 7945

[email protected]

www.duei.de/ifa

EIASEuropean Institute for Asian Studies

Director: Dr Willem van der Geest

35 Rue des Deux Eglises,

1000 Brussels, Belgium

T +32-2-230 8122

F +32-2-230 5402

[email protected]

www.eias.org

CERI - Sciences PoFondation Nationale des Sciences

Politiques

Director: Prof. Christophe Jaffrelot

56 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris, France

T +33-1-58717000

F +33-1-58717090

[email protected]

www.ceri-sciencespo.com

CEAOCentro de Estudios de Asia Oriental

Director: Prof. Taciana Fisac

Centro de Estudios de Asia Oriental

Universidad Autonoma de Madrid

Campus de Cantoblanco

28049 Madrid, Spain

T +34-91-397 4695

F +34-91-397 5278

[email protected]

www.uam.es/otroscentros/

asiaoriental/especifica/

SOASSchool of Oriental and African Studies

Director: Prof. Colin Bundy

University of London

Thornhaugh Street / Russel Square,

London, WC1H 0XG, United Kingdom

T +44-20-7637 2388

F +44-20-7436 3844

[email protected]

www.soas.ac.uk

SSAAPSThe Swedish School of Advanced Asia

Pacific Studies

Director: Prof. Thommy Svensson

The STINT Foundation, Skeppargatan

8, 114 52 Stockholm, Sweden

T +46-70-6355160

F +46-8-6619210

[email protected]

www.ssaaps.stint.se

IIAS (secretariat Asia Alliance)

More information:

www.asia-alliance.org

Asia Alliance

Submission of abstracts forpanels and papersInstitutions, researchers and PhDstudents are invited to submitabstracts for:• Institutional panels• Organized panels• Individual papers

Please note that all abstracts andpresentations should be in English.Submission of abstracts for panels andpapers can be made through ICAS 5registration forms available at

DeadlinesDeadline individual submissions: 1 October 2006

Notice of acceptance: 15 December 2006

Deadline organized and institutional panels: 15 December 2006

Notice of acceptance: 15 January 2007

Financial supportFinancial support for travel and lodgingwill be made available to PhD studentsand young academics. For details seethe website.

Exhibition spaceThere will be an exhibition of AsianStudies books. Interested publishersshould contact Marie Lenstrup [email protected]

The International Convention of Asia Scholars has established itself as one of the largest biennial gatherings forAsia scholars to meet and discuss new developments in their fields. Previous conventions were held in Leiden(1998), Berlin (2001), Singapore (2003) and Shanghai (2005), drawing an average of 1,200 participants from over50 countries.

ICAS 5 will be hosted by the Institute of Occidental Studies (IKON) and the Institute of Malay World andCivilization (ATMA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and will be held in the Kuala Lumpur Conference Centreopposite the landmark Petronas Towers. We expect over 1,500 Asian Studies specialists to converge on KualaLumpur for ICAS 5: Sharing a Future in Asia. The organizing committee is pleased to invite proposals for panelsand topics. ICAS 5 will also serve as the occasion to award the ICAS Book Prizes.

ICAS Book PrizesICAS Book Prizes, established in 2004, were awarded last year to Elizabeth C. Economy

(social sciences), Christopher Reed (humanities) and Samuel Kwok-Fu Wong (best PhD).

We now invite all Asian Studies books published in 2005 and 2006 to compete for the

2007 prizes. Three prizes will be awarded: 1. best study in the humanities; 2. best study

in the social sciences; 3. best PhD in Asian Studies. Prize money consists of euro 2,500

for categories 1 and 2. The best PhD thesis will be published. Publishers and PhD stu-

dents are welcome to enter their books by sending six copies to the ICAS Secretariat in

Leiden, the Netherlands, before 31 December 2006.

ICAS Book Series The ICAS Book Series is a new feature of

ICAS. The first volumes will be published

in 2006. The series welcomes edited vol-

umes and monographs which are the out-

come of panels at ICAS. For more infor-

mation please contact the ICAS

Secretariat.

www.icassecretariat.org

International Convention of Asia Scholars 5

Information and registration ICAS 5ICAS 5 Host

c/o IKON-ATMA

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

43600 UKM BANGI

MALAYSIA

[email protected]

www.icas5kl.com

General Information on ICASICAS Secretariat

c/o IIAS

P.O. Box 9515

2300 RA Leiden

The Netherlands

[email protected]

www.icasecretariat.org

ICAS depends on voluntary

contributions. Find out more

about supporting ICAS at

www.icassecretariat.org.

Call for Panels and PapersKuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2-5 August 2007

www.icas5kl.com



> IIAS fellows

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Cat

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8


> IIAS research

Programmes

Care of the aged: gender, institutional provisions andsocial security in India, the Netherlands and Sri LankaThis IDPAD/IIAS comparative research project addresses theimplications of population aging for the social security andhealth care of elderly people. As the experience of ageing isgendered and can vary according to class, caste, and religion,the project addresses different social and economic groups,with an emphasis on women. Coordinator: Carla Risseeuw

Energy programme AsiaThis programme on the geopolitics of energy focuses on Chinese,Indian, Japanese and South Korean strategies to secure oil andnatural gas from the Caspian region (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,Turkmenistan, Iran, and Russia) and the Persian Gulf. The pro-gramme is institutionally supported by IIAS and the Clingen-dael International Energy Programme (CIEP), Den Haag. Coordinator: Mehdi Parvizi Amineh

Indonesianisasi and nationalizationFrom the 1930s to the early 1960s, the Indonesian economytransformed from a ‘colonial’ economy, dominated by theDutch, to a ‘national’ economy in which indigenous businessassumed control. This NIOD project explores this transfor-mation, studying the late-colonial era as well as the Japaneseoccupation, the Revolution and the Sukarno period. Two issuesare given special attention: Indonesianisasi and nationaliza-tion, in particular the expropriation of Dutch corporate assetsin Indonesia in 1957-58. Coordinator: J. Thomas Lindblad

Illegal but licit: transnational flows and permissive polities in AsiaThis research programme analyses forms of globalisation-from-below, transnational practices considered acceptable(licit) by participants but which are often illegal in a formalsense. It explores limitations of ‘seeing like a state’, and insteadprivileges the perspectives of participants in these illegal butlicit transnational flows.Coordinator: Willem van Schendel

Islam in Indonesia: the dissemination of religious author-ity in the 20th and early 21st centuriesForms and transformations of religious authority among theIndonesian Muslim community are the focus of this researchprogramme. The term authority relates to persons and booksas well as various other forms of written and non-written ref-erences. Special attention is paid to the production, repro-duction and dissemination of religious authority in the fieldsof four sub-programmes: ulama (religious scholars) and fat-was; tarekat (mystical orders); dakwah (propagation of thefaith); and education. Coordinator: Nico Kaptein

Socio-genetic marginalization in AsiaThe development and application of new biomedical andgenetic technologies have important socio-political implica-tions. This NWO/ASSR/IIAS research programme aims togain insight into the ways in which the use of and monopolyover genetic information shape and influence population poli-cies, environmental ethics and biomedical and agriculturalpractices in various Asian religious and secular cultures andacross national boundaries. Coordinator: Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner

Syntax of the languages of southern ChinaThis project aims to achieve a detailed description and in-depthanalysis of a limited number of syntactic phenomena in six lan-guages, both Sinitic and non-Sinitic, spoken in the area southof the Yangtze River. The project will systematically comparethese descriptions and analyses to contribute to the develop-ment of the theory of language and human language capacity.Coordinator: Rint Sybesma

Trans-Himalayan database development: China and thesubcontinent (Phase I)The project’s main goal is to combine the database of cognatewords in Tibeto-Burman languages, maintained by the Insti-tute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Chinese Academy ofSocial Sciences) with language data of the George van DriemHimalayan Languages Project (Leiden University) to create ajoint, online database of Tibeto-Burman languages with a mir-ror-site in Leiden. The project’s second objective is to contin-ue documentation of endangered Tibeto-Burman languagesin China in cooperation with the Institute of Ethnology andAnthropology. Coordinator: Katia Chirkova

Networks

ABIA South and Southeast Asian art and archaeology index The Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeology is an anno-tated bibliographic database for publications covering Southand Southeast Asian art and archaeology. The project waslaunched by IIAS in 1997 and is currently coordinated by thePostgraduate Institute of Archaeology of the University ofKelaniya, Colombo, Sri Lanka. The database is freely accessi-ble at www.abia.net. Extracts from the database are also avail-able as bibliographies, published in a series by Brill. The proj-ect receives scientific support from UNESCO. Coordinator: Ellen Raven

www.abia.net

Changing labour relations in AsiaCLARA aims towards a comparative and historical under-standing of labour relations in different parts of Asia, includ-ing changes within national economies, links to internation-al markets and the nature of state intervention. It focuses onfive overlapping themes: the labour process, labour mobility,labour consciousness, gendered labour and labour laws andlabour movements. Coordinator: Ratna Saptari

Transnational society, media, and citizenshipThis multidisciplinary network studies the complex nature ofcontemporary cultural identities and the impact of the glob-alization of information and communication technologies onthe (re)construction of these identities. The programme isbased in the Netherlands while the projects are carried out atnumerous fieldwork sites. Coordinator: Peter van der Veer

Initiatives

Development of space technology in AsiaThe space age has dramatically impacted all nations. In Asia,the ‘space-faring nations’ of India, China and Japan have suc-cessfully developed space technologies and applications. OtherAsian nations have readily adopted these applications, includ-ing satellites for telecommunications, for gathering data onthe weather, and environmental and earth resources. IIAS hasinitiated a series of workshops on the topic. Coordinator: David Soo

Intermediated cross-border marriages in East and Southeast AsiaThe past decade has seen a rapid increase in the intra-Asiaflow of brides, particularly between Southeast and East Asia.While in Europe intermediated marriages continue to be seenas a form of the commodification of women, recent scholar-ship in intra-Asia cross-border marriages challenges this dom-inant view. Coordinator: Melody Lu

Piracy and robbery on the Asian seasActs of piracy loom large in Asian waters, with the bulk of allofficially reported incidents of maritime piracy occurring inSoutheast Asia during the 1990s. This is of serious concernto international shipping, as the sea-lanes between East Asia,the Middle East, and Europe pass through Southeast Asia.IIAS and the Centre for Maritime Research at the Universityof Amsterdam are currently identifying issues and concerns,and are delineating core elements of an interdisciplinaryresearch programme on piracy and robbery at sea in Asia.Coordinators: Wim Stokhof and John Kleinen

IIAS research programmes, networks & initiatives

ComparativeIntellectualHistories ofEarly ModernAsia

IIAS Masterclass30 May - 2 June 2006Leiden, the Netherlands

Led by:

Sheldon Pollock (William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and South Asian Studies,

Columbia University, New York, USA)

How to understand the logic of an intellectual order founded upon ideologies

of continuity and preservation, rather than ideologies of improvement and obso-

lescence? A comparative intellectual history of the early modern world (1500-

1800) can address this question more effectively and develop a more heuristi-

cally powerful theory than can any one scholarly tradition investigated in

isolation. This masterclass will bring together experts in the field of Sinology,

Indology and Middle Eastern studies to consider shared issues not only in the

historiography of early modern knowledge, but also in the theoretical challenges

we must confront in writing the intellectual history of the non-West, where even

the terms of the theme ‘intellectual’ and ‘history’ do not go without saying. The

focus will be put on three forms of knowledge: aesthetics, political thought, and

moral philosophy.

Also presenting:

Michael Cook (Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, USA)

Benjamin Elman (Professor of East Asian History, Princeton University, USA)

Quentin Skinner (Professor of History, Cambridge University, UK)

Deadline for registration:

15 April 2006

Registration and information:


Manon Osseweijer

PO Box 9515

2300 RA Leiden

T +31 (0)71 527 2227

F +31 (0)71 527 4162

[email protected]

www.iias.nl


A n n o u n c e m e n t

For more information on IIAS research: www.iias.nl


> Announcementsresearchers of ethnomusicology, folklore,

anthropology, linguistics and phonetics.

Sheikin will present the culture of the

endangered northern peoples Chukchee,

Udege, Evenki, Forest Nenets and the Khan-

ty, while Ignateeva will present on the

musical culture of the endangered Yuka-

gir people.

After an introduction on the musical folk-

lore of these peoples, a demonstration of

musical examples from shamanism, epic

literature, sung improvisations, sound

imitations, music of Bear Festivals and

round dances will be presented live on tra-

ditional musical instruments and on CD

(available for participants), with an expla-

nation of the making of these instru-

ments. Participants will have the oppor-

tunity to play instruments and to learn the

specific art of singing.

Information:

Cecilia Odé, IIAS

[email protected]

Culture and commerce inthe Indian Ocean

25 - 27 September 2006

Leiden

The burgeoning economies of East and

South Asia challenge Indian Ocean schol-

arship to face new political, cultural and

commercial developments, as well as new

identities mapped onto complex cultural

exchanges between the global, the dias-

poric and the local.

The conference will analyse the historical

roots of commerce as well as the new mar-

kets of the new post-colonial yet globalised

era – from spices to Bollywood. The con-

ference will be framed by a cultural stud-

ies paradigm, which welcomes historical,

social, and cultural analysis and interdis-

ciplinary methods. The conference would

like to close with a better idea of why we

should value the cultures of the Indian

Ocean, old and new, and how the

exchange of commodities interacts with

cultural value.

Panels will feature 3 papers of 20 minutes

each with 10 minutes for discussion after

each paper. Parallel sessions may be run.

Plenary speeches will be an hour includ-

ing time for questions.

Organisers:

Henk Niemeijer, Michael Pearson, Peter

Reeves, Stephen Muecke, Devleena

Ghosh, Chris Nierstrasz, Lola Sharon

Davidson

Email: [email protected]

www.IndianOceanProject.net

Savifa / South Asia libraryin Heidelberg

From 1 January 2005, Heidelberg Uni-

versity Library is responsible for the Spe-

cial Subject Collection ‘South Asia’ fund-

ed by the German Research Council

(DFG). The collection, previously in

Tübingen, is now housed in the Library of

the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg. In

addition, the new virtual South Asia

library Savifa will serve as a gateway to

print and electronic media from and

about South Asia.

The collection covers India, Pakistan,

Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Mal-

dives and Tibet (up to 1950) – academic

literature from and about these countries

with a focus on literature, language, his-

tory, politics, anthropology, art history,

religion and philosophy. The library holds

more than 265,000 volumes and 500 cur-

rent periodicals with an annual increase

of approximately 5,000 volumes.

Work on Savifa began in January 2005. The

aim is to create a gateway for scholars and

students to information – in both printed

and electronic form – from and about

South Asia. The newly published Savifa-

Guide is a database for South-Asia-relat-

ed Internet resources, catalogued accord-

ing to the bibliographic standards of the

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Other

components will be a metasearch engine,

allowing users to simultaneously search

online catalogues of South Asia Studies

libraries as well as bibliographic databas-

es and the current contents of 206 topical

periodicals.

Asian Studies in Amsterdam(ASiA)

AsiA, a joint endeavour of the University

of Amsterdam and the International Insti-

tute for Asian Studies, promotes the study

of Asia through research and outreach in

the Amsterdam region. We aim to

increase Amsterdam’s contact with

researchers in and from Asia, as well as

introduce contemporary Asian expres-

sions, developments and experiences to

the wider public. All individuals and insti-

tutions, academic and non-academic,

interested in co-operating with ASiA

are cordially invited to contact project

manager Sikko Visscher at

[email protected]

ASiA facilitates research within the theme

‘Making a Living in a Transnational World:

Asian Perspectives on Globalisation’,

based on two research projects at the Uni-

versity of Amsterdam. ‘Asia and Europe

Compared’, headed by Mario Rutten,

comparatively assesses social inequality,

views and behaviour of the middle class-

es, labour relations and informalization in

Europe and Asia, and aims to provide a

fairer assessment of Asia’s role in the

world today. ‘Illegal but Licit: Transna-

tional Flows and Permissive Polities in

Asia’, headed by Willem van Schendel

and Li Minghuan, consists of four proj-

ects analysing current migration in its

legal and social contexts. For more

information on this project please see

http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/

NWOP_6FCJXB_Eng. The 19th European

Conference on Modern South Asian Stud-

ies (27-30 June 2006, Leiden) will include

a round table on borders, border cross-

ing, and associated legal and social

regimes. Van Schendel is also the guest

editor of a forthcoming special issue of

the IIAS Newsletter on this topic.

ASiA is proud to co-host the annual

Wertheim lecture by David Ludden (Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania) on 12 May 2006

in Amsterdam. For upcoming activities,

starting with our agenda for March and

April 2006, surf to www.iias.nl/asia

The musical folklore of thepeoples of northern Asia

IIAS workshop

20 April 2006

Amsterdam

This workshop by Yuri Sheikin and Tatjana

Ignatieva, Arctic State Institute of Culture

and Arts in Yakutsk, Republic of Sakha,

will be held at the IIAS Amsterdam branch

office (location to be announced on

www.iias.nl) for students, teachers and

POSITIONS AT THE ASIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

Applications are invited for a 3 month (Senior) Visiting Research Fellowships at the Asia Research

Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore to commence on 2 January 2007, 2 April 2007,

2 July 2007.

The positions are intended for outstanding active researchers on Asian topics, with a balance

anticipated between senior and junior, the Asian region and the world. At least one published outcome

is expected, and applicants who do not normally publish in English will be encouraged and assisted

to do so. Interdisciplinary interests are encouraged. “Asia” as a research field is defined loosely in terms

of the region in which Singapore is positioned. Interested applicants are invited to consult our website

at www.ari.nus.edu.sg for application details. Closing date: 31 May 2006

Address for applications and references:

Human Resources, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore,

AS7, Level 4, 5 Arts Link, Singapore 117570, Fax: (65) 6779 1428, Email: [email protected]


[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ] [ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]



> AnnouncementsAmong the services currently offered:

• Access to HEIDI the online catalogue of

the Heidelberg University Library to

search the holdings of the Library of the

South Asia Institute

http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/

Englisch/helios/kataloge/heidi.html

• Monthly acquisition lists with alerting

services, which can be subscribed to by

sending an email to [email protected]

heidelberg.de


helios/nel_ssg/Suedasien.html

• Electronic Document Delivery Service

which ensures articles from journals and

collective works will be digitized within

24-48 hours and delivered as PDF files


helios/ssgs/Welcome.html

• Online Contents SSG Südasien offering

access to table of contents of 206 jour-

nals on culture, politics and languages

of South Asia


Englisch/helios/fachinfo/www/

suedasien/olc.htm

• Full text server of the University Library

as a publication platform for research on

South Asia


helios/heidok-ssg.html

For further information please visit our

interim website at http://www.ub.uni-

heidelberg.de/helios/fachinfo/www/

suedasien/Welcome.html or contact one

of the three academic librarians:

Eleonore Schmitt

[email protected]

Sonja Stark-Wild

[email protected]

Nicole Merkel

[email protected]

International symposium onAsia-Pacific studies

15-17 November 2006

Havana City, Cuba

The Center for Studies on Asia and Ocea-

nia (CEAO) invites you to the Interna-

tional Symposium on Asia Pacific Stud-

ies to be held at our center. Our first

convocation will address contemporary

economic developments and political

and security trends in the Asia-Pacific

region.

Summaries should be sent in digital for-

mat through e-mail or as .TXT or .DOC

files and should not exceed one sheet.

The deadline is 31 October 2006.

For further information please contact:

Ana Delia Soltura / Head of Public

Relations

Center for Studies on Asia and

Oceania (CEAO)

20 Street and 7ma. avenue.

Miramar, Playa

Havana City. Cuba P. C. 11 300

Phone 206 6131 / 202 8392-94 ext 102

Fax (537) 202 60 38

e-mail: [email protected]

[email protected]

Christianity and cultures:Japan and China incomparison (1543-1644)

30 November - 2 December 2006

Macau

This symposium aims to bring together

leading Sinologists and Japanologists

researching the history of Christianity in

Japan and China. It takes as its point of

departure the 400th anniversary of the

death of Alessandro Valignano, S.J.

(1539-1606), one of the first Europeans

to articulate a clear policy of religious

and cultural engagement with China and

Japan.

The symposium aims to foster compari-

son and interdisciplinary inquiry. Its for-

mat of short formal presentations and

interactive panel discussions will allow

scholars to present their own research and

explore jointly with other specialists sim-

ilarities and differences between new

expressions of Christian culture in the two

countries. Themes include early Christian

texts in translation, works of art, the devel-

opment of new forms of Christian ritual

and local community organization in late

Ming China and Warring States / early

Tokugawa Japan.

Scholars will also explore the unique role

played by Macau, the port-city that was at

the diplomatic, economic, and religious

crossroads between East Asia and Europe

and that facilitated these encounters

between faith and culture. The event is co-

sponsored by the Macau Ricci Institute,

China, and the Ricci Institute at the Uni-

versity of San Francisco Center for the

Pacific Rim, U.S.A. The official languages

of the symposium will be English, (Man-

darin) Chinese, and Japanese. Simultane-

ous translation will be provided.

For detailed information and updates,

please visit: http://www.usfca.edu/ricci

and http://www.riccimac.org

Sex, power and slavery inthe Indian Ocean world

Call for papers

The international conference Sex, Power

and Slavery: The Dynamics of Carnal Rela-

tions under Enslavement in the Indian

Ocean World (Africa from the Cape to

Cairo divide eastwards, the Middle East,

South and Southeast Asia, Australasia and

the Far East) will be held at McGill Uni-

versity, Montreal, Canada, 19-21 April

2007.

Abstracts by: 1 August 2006

Acceptance notice by: 1 October 2006

Paper submission by: 1 February 2007

Themes:

• Sexual relations between the enslaved

• Sexual relations between the enslaved

and non-slaves

• Sexual relations within maroon com-

munities

• Sex slave traffic

• Structures of sexual enslavement

• Harems

• Concubines

• Eunuchs

• Homosexuality and enslavement

• Enslaved children and sex

• Rape

• Affective relationships within the

enslaved community and between the

enslaved and non-slaves

• Sex and the enslaved household

• Enslavement, sex and the slave-owning

household

• Enslavement, sex and disease

• Enslavement, sex and taboos

• Sex and enslavement as reflected in

traditions, myths and literature

• Sex as slave agency.

Papers (original unpublished material)

will be pre-circulated and the conference

organised in thematic sessions led by dis-

cussants. Authors will NOT present

papers.

Registration fee by 1 March 2007: US$150

($60 for students).

Contact: Gwyn Campbell:

[email protected]

(Senior) RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP AT THE ASIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE (ARI),

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE (NUS) – World Vision

The Asia Research Institute (ARI) has entered into a partnership with World Vision Asia Tsunami

Response Team to provide academic and experiential expertise in assessing the effects of disasters in

Asia, particularly the 26 December 2004 tsunami, in specifically defined research areas, as specified in

the project description.

In connection with this, ARI invites applicants for the fixed-term two-year position of (Senior) Research

Fellow to lead field-based research and co-lead, with a World Vision counterpart, a process to produce

quality documentation for learning on key topics of interest. The successful applicant will be required to

take up the post by July 2006 or earlier.

Closing date for applications: March 31, 2006.

Please log onto our website at http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/appoint/ResearchFellowship-WorldVision.htm

for application details and information on the said project.




Max-Planck-Institut für ethnologische Forschung Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Our Institute has the opportunity to fill the following positions in the context of the Project Group Legal Plu-ralism

researchers (TVöD – formerly BAT-O) PhD Grants Postdoctoral Grants

The Project Group focuses on law, authority and social behaviour in plural legal settings under conditions of increasing globalisation. Particular attention is given to the transnationalisation and diversification of law, and to the role of religious authorities and traditional and state institutions of conflict management. The Project Group starts two new projects: 1. “State Courts and their Religious Alternatives”, headed by Franz von Benda-Beckmann and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann The project will look at the role of religious leaders and institutions - of different religious backgrounds - in dispute management and conflict prevention, e.g. in business relations, land issues and ethnic conflicts. A focus will be on Indonesia, but applications for other regions are welcome, too. 2. “Law against the state”, headed by Julia Eckert The project deals with local adoptions of international right discourses. It will study the global circulation of legal knowledge and norms of governance by looking how law is used by individuals and groups in conflicts with states. The focus is on states with majority Muslim populations, e.g. Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, but also others depending on the applicant’s preferences. The TVöD Positions are for three years (with the possibility of a two-year extension). This position is open to scientists who have completed their doctorate within the last ten years. The PhD Grants are generally awarded for 2 years, with the possibility of two six-month extensions. We ex-pect our PhD students to complete a year-long period of fieldwork as part of their studies. The Postdoctoral Grants are for two years (a one-year extension is possible for foreigners). Postdoctoral Grants can only be awarded to scientists who have received their doctorate within the last ten years. The grants are not taxed and are free from social security stipulations. The Max Planck Society is committed to raising the proportion of women in under-represented fields; we thus explicitly encourage applications by women. Individuals with disabilities will be given priority, assum-ing equal qualifications. Applications should include the standard documentation and a project resume. I) Standard documentation includes: - a cover letter - a CV including a list of publications - a project resume (two to five pages; two alternative ideas may also be considered) - photocopies of university degrees - names of 2-3 referees, whom we may contact II) There is no application form to be filled out. III) Applications may be submitted by email. Final selection will be made following interviews in June 2006. The projects will start in September/October 2006. Please send applications to the following address by 20th May 2006: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Personnel Administration, P. O. Box 11 03 51 D – 06017 Halle/Saale or email to: [email protected]. Further background information concerning these projects and the Project Group can be found on our home-page: http://www.eth.mpg.de.


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d co

ffee

ser

vice

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d ot

her

tabl

ewar

efr

om E

ast

Asi

a is

com

pare

d an

d co

ntra

sted

wit

h po

st-m

oder

n ce

ram

ics

from

the

end

of

the

20th

cen

tury

, by

desi

gner

s su

ch a

s A

ndre

aB

ranz

i, A

less

andr

o M

endi

ni a

nd

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from

the

Ital

ian

des

ign

stu

dio

Mem

phis

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exh

ibit

ion

appe

ars

to c

over

tw

oen

tire

ly d

iffe

ren

t w

orld

s, b

ut d

emon

stra

tes

just

how

clo

sely

rel

ated

the

se w

orld

s ar

e. A

nun

orth

odox

pre

sent

atio

n of

pos

t-m

oder

n an

dtr

adit

iona

l ori

enta

l cer

amic

s en

sure

s un

ex-

pect

ed c

ombi

nat

ions

tha

t w

ill n

ot o

nly

chal

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nge

and

stim

ulat

e vi

sito

rs b

ut a

lso

surp

rise

them

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eum

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Mar

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ao F

ei: P

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Ant

i-Her

oes

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vid

eos,

pho

to-

grap

hs, p

erfo

rman

ces

and

inst

alla

tion

sex

plor

e th

e ne

w u

rban

cul

ture

in C

hin

a. H

erth

eatr

ical

and

hum

orou

s po

rtra

it o

f lif

e in

toda

y’s

Chi

na r

evea

ls h

ow y

oung

peo

ple

inpa

rtic

ular

are

livi

ng

in a

fant

asy

wor

ld in

flu-

ence

d by

the

en

tert

ainm

ent

indu

stry

an

d gl

ob-

al t

rend

s su

ch a

s hi

p-ho

p an

d m

anga

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the

sam

e ti

me,

Cao

Fei

sho

ws

in a

mor

e do

cu-

men

tary

sty

le t

he c

hang

es b

roug

ht a

bout

by

the

cont

inui

ng s

prea

d of

cap

ital

ism

, eve

nth

ough

it d

oes

not

yet

see

m p

ossi

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for

peo-

ple

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reak

aw

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om t

radi

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cult

ure.

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Unt

il 9

Apr

il 20

06

Cub

ism

in A

sia:

Unb

ound

ed D

ialo

gues

Cub

ism

has

had

a p

rofo

und

influ

ence

on

sub-

sequ

ent

arti

stic

dev

elop

men

ts t

hrou

ghou

t th

ew

orld

. Thr

ough

rep

eate

d co

llisi

on a

nd fu

sion

wit

h pr

e-ex

isti

ng s

tyle

s, t

radi

tion

s an

d cu

s-to

ms,

Cub

ism

has

pro

vide

d a

stim

ulus

to

the

ques

tion

of ‘

mod

ern

art

’ in

Asi

an c

ount

ries

.

18 M

ay -

9 Ju

ly 2

00

6 Fi

ctio

n@Lo

ve: U

ltra

New

Vis

ion

of C

onte

m-

pora

ry A

rt in

the

Age

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nim

amic

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nim

a-ti

on+

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n ex

hibi

t on

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xper

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ce in

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ntur

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ombi

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g re

alit

yan

d vi

rtua

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lity,

the

exh

ibit

use

s th

e im

agi-

nat

ion

’s c

olor

s to

enr

ich

role

-pla

yin

g in

peo

-pl

e’s

lives

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Asi

an C

ivili

sati

ons

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eum

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lace

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il 20

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Pow

er D

ress

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tile

s fo

r R

uler

s an

d P

ries

tsfr

om t

he C

hris

Hal

l col

lect

ion

Pow

er r

elat

ions

wit

hin

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na a

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eyon

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ehi

ghlig

hted

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ough

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spl

endo

ur o

f 125

silk

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reas

ures

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War

ring

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tes

peri

-od

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earl

y 20

th c

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hat

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g yo

u to

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inne

r co

urts

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dden

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y. W

orks

incl

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drag

on r

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ests

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hang

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Unt

il 30

Apr

il 20

06

The

Dal

ai L

amas

The

exhi

biti

on fe

atur

es a

t le

ast

one

than

gka

and

one

stat

ue o

f eac

h of

the

14

Dal

ai L

amas

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lso

on d

ispl

ay w

ill b

e w

ritt

en d

ocum

ents

(inc

ludi

ng la

rge

silk

scr

olls

wit

h im

pres

sive

seal

s), s

crol

ls d

epic

ting

the

pro

tect

ive

deit

ies

of t

he D

alai

Lam

a, r

epre

sen

tati

ons

of P

otal

aP

alac

e (t

he D

alai

Lam

as’ w

inte

r re

side

nce

),gi

fts

give

n a

nd r

ecei

ved

by t

he D

alai

Lam

as,

rare

lett

ers,

and

old

pho

togr

aphs

.

Mus

eum

Rie

tber

g Z

üric

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asse

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ich,

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itze

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aus

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ne 2

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dang

ered

Lov

e

Illu

stra

ted

love

poe

ms

from

Indi

a ar

e ac

com

-pa

nied

by

an in

stal

lati

on b

y th

e co

ntem

pora

ryar

tist

Yve

s N

etzh

amm

er. I

n th

e 18

th c

entu

ry,

an E

ast

Indi

an p

ain

ter

illus

trat

ed a

n an

thol

ogy

of 1

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love

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Wit

h a

stee

l sty

lus

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grav

ed t

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exts

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tic

imag

es o

n na

r-ro

w p

alm

leav

es. T

he p

oet

Am

aru

com

pose

dth

e po

ems

in S

ansk

rit

duri

ng t

he 7

th c

entu

ry.

At P

ark-

Vill

a R

iete

r14

May

- 11

June

20

06

God

dess

es: F

our

Cen

turi

es o

f Ind

ian

Pai

ntin

gs

In In

dia

holy

tex

ts, h

ymn

s, m

yths

and

pra

yers

wer

e us

ually

illu

stra

ted

by w

ell-e

duca

ted

pro-

fess

ion

al p

ain

ters

. The

ir p

aint

ings

of t

he G

od-

dess

wer

e us

ed fo

r m

edit

atio

n as

wel

l as

for

the

empo

wer

men

t of

the

imag

inat

ion.

Abo

ut60

pai

nti

ngs

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the

mus

eum

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olle

ctio

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ve a

n in

side

vie

w o

f the

var

ious

man

ifes

ta-

tion

s of

the

Dev

i, th

e ‘G

reat

God

dess

’.

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eum

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Unt

il 21

May

20

06

Vis

ion

and

Bey

ond

Vis

ion

and

Bey

ond

pres

ents

the

wor

ks o

f the

six

reci

pien

ts o

f the

firs

t ‘T

echn

o A

rt C

reat

ion

Pro

ject

’ sup

port

ed b

y Th

e N

atio

nal C

ultu

rean

d A

rts

Foun

dati

on (

NC

AF)

. The

ir w

orks

are

:Ti

en-c

hang

Wu’

s C

onte

mpo

rary

Occ

ult,

Dig

ital

Mag

ic, w

hich

pro

bes

into

the

Eas

t’s

myt

holo

g-ic

al t

radi

tion

s an

d us

es t

wo-

dim

ensi

onal

dig

i-ta

l im

ages

to

crea

te ‘c

onte

mpo

rary

mag

ic’

clos

e to

Tai

wan

’s fo

lk c

ultu

re; S

hu-m

in L

in’s

Hyp

nosi

s P

roje

ctan

d In

ner

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eus

es li

ght,

abr

ain

wav

e re

cord

er, i

mag

es a

nd in

tera

ctiv

ete

chn

olog

ies

and

take

s th

e hu

man

sub

con-

scio

us a

nd u

nit

es it

wit

h in

tera

ctiv

e ar

t co

n-ce

pts;

Jun

-jieh

Wan

g’s

Mic

robi

olog

y A

ssoc

iati

on- S

tate

of A

ffair

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lan

IIap

plie

s di

gita

l film

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tera

ctiv

e in

stal

lati

on a

nd a

spi

rit

heal

ing

room

to

crea

te a

fict

itio

us t

echn

olog

ical

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m. A

nchi

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aiw

an S

ound

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nun

ites

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cord

ings

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soun

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ndso

und

art;

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n-ch

ien

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Mem

ory

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en -

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y N

est

blen

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igit

al s

culp

ture

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l pri

nti

ng

and

inte

ract

ive

inst

alla

tion

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-tzu

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s in

tera

ctiv

e ar

t: D

igit

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uppe

ts o

nV

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tage

empl

oys

pupp

ets

and

inve

nted

inte

ract

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tech

niqu

es in

an

atte

mpt

to

open

new

cre

ativ

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rect

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il 1

Apr

il 20

06

Zha

ng E

nli -

Wor

k M

enIn

thi

s se

ries

of p

aint

ings

cal

led

Wor

k M

enZ

han

g En

li re

veal

s th

e m

ost

over

look

edm

ajor

ity

of C

hine

se s

ocie

ty –

the

und

ercl

ass,

from

thi

eves

to

addi

cts,

ban

dits

to

maf

ia -

and

capt

ures

the

m in

ten

der

mom

ents

am

idC

hina

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cono

mic

and

soc

ial t

urm

oil.

From

Qin

g D

ynas

ty p

aint

er Ji

n Lo

ng t

o cl

assi

cal C

hi-

nese

woo

dcut

s an

d dr

inki

ng p

oem

s by

Li B

o,th

e in

fluen

ces

exer

ting

the

mse

lves

on

Zha

ng’s

car

toon

ishl

y re

nder

ed p

ortr

aits

are

hist

oric

ally

incl

usiv

e. H

is t

echn

ical

ly r

efin

edbr

ushs

trok

es r

edee

m h

is s

ubje

cts

from

the

endl

ess

anon

ymou

s ev

erym

an s

trug

gle.

Unite

d King

dom

The

Mus

eum

of E

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sian

Art

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tree

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h.co

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mus

eum

east

asia

nart

Unt

il 23

Apr

il 20

06

An

East

ern

Impr

essi

on: P

aint

ings

in V

ario

usM

edia

by

Wen

dy Y

eoC

hief

ly k

now

n as

a s

emi-a

bstr

act

pain

ter,

Yeo’

s w

ork

is in

spir

ed b

y la

ndsc

apes

,ci

tysc

apes

, and

org

anic

form

s in

nat

ure.

She

is p

arti

cula

rly

attr

acte

d to

cit

ysca

pes

whi

chen

com

pass

wat

er. C

ombi

ning

mov

emen

t an

dsp

ace

thro

ugh

mix

ed m

edia

, Yeo

’s v

ibra

ntw

ork

acco

mpl

ishe

s an

idea

l fus

ion

of E

ast

and

Wes

t.

Unt

il 23

Apr

il 20

06

Hid

den

Thre

ads

Det

ailin

g th

e fa

scin

atin

g vo

yage

of B

riti

sh s

is-

ters

Isab

el a

nd E

lean

or C

adbu

ry t

o C

hina

and

Japa

n in

190

7, t

his

exhi

biti

on u

ncov

ers

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souv

enir

item

s th

ey c

olle

cted

whi

le t

rave

ling

arou

nd E

ast

Asi

a. O

ther

mem

orab

ilia

in t

heex

hibi

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incl

ude

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iona

ble

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nese

acc

es-

sori

es o

f the

per

iod

and

som

e Ja

pane

se it

ems,

acco

mpa

nied

by

blac

k an

d w

hite

pho

togr

aphs

and

lett

ers

of t

he t

rip

as w

ell a

s ha

nd t

inte

dph

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raph

ic s

ouve

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Nat

iona

l Mus

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ark

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May

20

06

The

Art

es M

undi

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ze

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Art

es M

undi

Pri

ze, f

irst

aw

arde

d in

Mar

ch20

04,

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est

ablis

hed

to c

eleb

rate

vis

ual c

ul-

ture

from

acr

oss

the

glob

e. T

his

year

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a-tu

res

eigh

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ntem

pora

ry a

rtis

ts w

hose

wor

kin

terp

rets

the

bro

ad t

hem

e of

the

pri

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man

form

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hum

an c

ondi

tion

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ing

toou

r un

ders

tand

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uman

ity.

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an a

rtis

tsse

lect

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r th

e pr

ize

are

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dh G

upta

and

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tsun

g W

u. O

ther

par

tcip

atin

g ar

tist

s: E

ija-

Liis

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htila

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nlan

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hom

as D

eman

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er-

man

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auri

cio

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s &

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ter

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zil &

Sw

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rlic

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rgen

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ms

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land

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tic

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tre

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tem

pora

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rt

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ous

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Man

ches

ter:

Unt

il 2

Apr

20

06

Not

ting

ham

: 22

Apr

20

06

- 25

June

20

06

Bri

tish

Art

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w 6

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Art

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rece

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ork

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art

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and

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ups

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g an

d w

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ng in

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tain

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ay. T

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wid

era

nge

of a

rt fo

rms

illus

trat

ing

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brea

dth

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exce

llenc

e of

cur

rent

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tish

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ing.

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clud

es w

orks

by

Zar

ina

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mji,

Gor

don

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-un

g, Z

ineb

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ira

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nese

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s C

entr

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23 M

arch

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Am

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Indo

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Ham

ayon

robe

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ham

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he.s

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nne.

fr

ww

w.ir

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23-2

5 M

arch

20

06

Am

ster

dam

, Net

herl

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Col

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Cul

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20

06

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Con

tact

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teve

ns

davi

d.st

even

s@un

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nna.

org

27-3

1 M

arch

20

06

Leid

en, N

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rlan

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Firs

t EA

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in C

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ingu

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terc

lass

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ven

or(s

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Con

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besm

a

r.p.e

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a@le

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iden

univ

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http

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bs.r

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efau

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29 M

arch

20

06

Am

ster

dam

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herl

ands

Blo

ggin

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d P

olit

ics:

On

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Emer

genc

e of

a

New

Dig

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Pub

lic S

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ASi

A a

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tact

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de K

loet

iias@

let.

leid

enun

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l

ww

w.ii

as.n

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30 M

arch

20

06

Rot

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rlan

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Dis

cuss

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Chi

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med

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ven

or(s

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arti

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e W

aal (

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vers

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Org

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Con

tact

: Jer

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de K

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iias@

let.

leid

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l

31 M

arch

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200

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Leid

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ethe

rlan

dsTo

war

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stan

ding

of C

hang

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Soci

etie

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ster

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dia

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p

Con

ven

or(s

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rik

de M

aake

r

Org

aniz

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NW

S

Con

tact

: Eri

k de

Maa

ker

emaa

ker@

gmai

l.com

April

2006

2 A

pril

200

6

Am

ster

dam

, Net

herl

ands

Asi

an H

orro

r

Mov

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Shut

ter)

an

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Org

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y C

inem

asia

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Con

tact

: Jer

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de K

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iias@

let.

leid

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ww

w.ii

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l

2-5

Apr

il 20

06

Xia

men

, Chi

naM

igra

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s be

twee

n Ea

st a

nd W

est:

Nor

mal

izin

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the

Per

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ry

Wor

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p

Con

ven

or(s

): Ja

n R

ath,

Jero

en D

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erni

k an

d

Zhu

ang

Guo

tu

Org

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niv

ersi

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f Am

ster

dam

and

Xia

men

Uni

vers

ity

spon

sore

d by

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S

Con

tact

: Leo

Dou

w

l.m.d

ouw

@uv

a.nl

5 A

pril

200

6

Am

ster

dam

, Net

herl

ands

Cyb

erjih

ad: O

n th

e U

ses

of t

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et fo

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amen

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ASi

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de

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leid

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ww

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5 A

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Leid

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Apr

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Bei

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lf-G

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rese

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and

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Org

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na T

rain

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Pro

gram

me

on V

illag

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over

nan

ce

Con

tact

: Ala

n S

her

alan

sher

@vg

chin

a.or

g.cn

ww

w.c

hina

rura

l.org

/euc

hina

prog

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lish

6 A

pril

200

6

Ber

kele

y, U

nite

d St

ates

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tnam

Stu

dies

: Sta

tes

of t

he F

ield

Wor

ksho

p

Org

aniz

ed b

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ente

r fo

r So

uthe

ast

Asi

a

Stud

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Con

tact

: Sar

ah M

axim

csea

s@be

rkel

ey.e

du

ias.

berk

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.edu

/cse

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6-9

Apr

il 20

06

San

Fran

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nite

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ates

AA

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Sing

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p

Org

aniz

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atio

nal U

nive

rsit

y of

Sing

apor

e, R

oyal

Hol

low

ay

Con

tact

: Ver

ene

Koh

popn

asia

@nu

s.ed

u.sg

18-2

0 A

pril

200

6

Ho

Chi

min

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ity,

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Educ

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the

Sear

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fere

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info

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atio

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.com

ww

w.e

duca

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hcm

.com

20 A

pril

200

6

Am

ster

dam

, Net

herl

ands

The

Mus

ical

Fol

klor

e of

the

Peo

ples

of N

orth

ern

Asi

a

Wor

ksho

p

Con

veno

r(s)

: Dr

Shei

ken

and

Dr

Igna

tiev

a

Org

aniz

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y A

SiA

/IIA

S

Con

tact

: Dr

Cec

ilia

Ode

c.od

e@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

ww

w.ii

as.n

l/iia

s/sh

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d=41

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6 A

pril

200

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Dam

ascu

s, S

yrai

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rab

Rep

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Use

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for

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atio

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uter

Spac

e A

ffai

rs

Con

tact

: Dav

id S

teve

ns

davi

d.st

even

s@un

vien

na.o

rg

27-2

8 A

pril

200

6

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

dsTh

e D

ecol

onis

atio

n of

the

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nesi

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ity

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in C

ompa

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an a

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Per

spec

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p

Org

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y N

IOD

and

KIT

LV

Con

tact

: Fre

ek C

olom

bijn

f.co

lom

bijn

@fs

w.v

u.nl

27-3

0 A

pril

200

6

Aus

tin,

Uni

ted

Stat

esSe

nse

and

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tanc

e in

Tra

dito

nal A

sian

Med

icin

e

Sixt

h in

tern

atio

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ongr

ess

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tern

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ssoc

iati

on fo

r th

e

Stud

y of

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diti

onal

Asi

an M

edic

ine

ww

w.ia

stam

.org

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htm

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006

10 M

ay 2

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Am

ster

dam

, Net

herl

ands

Asi

an G

ames

: On

the

Rap

id E

mer

genc

e of

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ture

s

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s in

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ety,

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den

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ASi

A a

nd II

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Con

tact

: Jer

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de K

loet

iias@

let.

leid

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l

ww

w.ii

as.n

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ay 2

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Viln

ius,

Lit

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iaC

ultu

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d C

ultu

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Org

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tact

: Val

das

Jask

unas

oc@

cr.v

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ww

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c.vu

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onfe

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g_3.

htm

l

12-1

3 M

ay 2

00

6

Sing

apor

eA

sian

Exp

ansi

ons:

The

His

tori

cal P

roce

sses

of

Pol

ity

Expa

nsio

n in

Asi

a

Wor

ksho

p

Org

aniz

ed b

y A

sia

Res

earc

h In

stit

ute

ww

w.a

ri.n

us.e

du.s

g/co

nf20

06/

expa

nsio

n.ht

m

12-1

5 M

ay 2

00

6

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

dsIm

agin

ing

and

Wri

ting

Kor

ea a

nd W

orld

s

Con

fere

nce

Con

veno

r(s)

: Bou

dew

ijn W

alra

ven,

JaH

yun

Kim

Hab

oush

, Mar

ion

Egge

rt

Org

aniz

ed b

y Le

iden

Uni

vers

ity/

Cen

tre

for

Kor

ean

Stud

ies

and

Col

umbi

a U

nive

rsit

y

Con

tact

: Bou

dew

ijn W

alra

ven

b.c.

a.w

alra

ven@

let.

leid

enun

iv.n

l

18-1

9 M

ay 2

00

6

Thes

salo

niki

, Gre

ece

Dig

ital

App

roac

hes

to C

arto

grap

hic

Her

itag

e

Wor

ksho

p

Org

aniz

ed b

y In

tern

atio

nal C

arto

grap

hic

Ass

ocia

tion

Con

tact

: Eva

ngel

os L

ivie

rato

s

livie

r@m

aplib

rary

.gr

ww

w.m

aplib

rary

.gr

18-2

0 M

ay 2

00

6

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

dsTh

e G

ener

osit

y of

Art

ifici

al L

angu

gage

s in

an

Asi

an P

ersp

ecti

ve

Sem

inar

Con

veno

r(s)

: Fri

ts S

taal

, Mar

tin

Stok

hof,

Wim

Sto

khof

, Joh

an v

an B

enth

em, R

obbe

rt

Dijk

graa

f

Org

aniz

ed b

y II

AS

Con

tact

: Mar

loes

Roz

ing

m.r

ozin

g@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

29-3

0 M

ay 2

00

6

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

dsEx

act

Scie

nce

and

Empi

re in

Pre

-mod

ern

Eura

sia:

A S

emin

ar in

Mem

ory

of D

avid

Pin

gree

Sem

inar

Con

veno

r(s)

: Kim

Plo

fker

, Jan

Hog

endi

jk

Org

aniz

ed b

y II

AS

Con

tact

: Mar

loes

Roz

ing

m.r

ozin

g@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

ww

w.ii

as.n

l

29-3

1 M

ay 2

00

6

Kol

katt

a, In

dia

Con

cept

of E

nvir

omen

tal C

onse

rvat

ion

in

Anc

ient

Indi

a

Con

fere

nce

Org

aniz

ed b

y In

dolo

gica

l Soc

iety

of I

ndia

Con

tact

: Ani

rban

Sen

gupt

a

hara

ppa_

04@

yaho

o.co

m

29-3

1 M

ay 2

00

6

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

dsIs

The

re a

‘Dha

rma

of H

isto

ry’?

Sem

inar

Con

veno

r(s)

: Axe

l Sch

neid

er

Org

aniz

ed b

y II

AS/

Leid

en U

nive

rsit

y

Con

tact

: Kar

in A

alde

rink

k.a.

aald

erin

k@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

ww

w.ii

as.n

l

30 M

ay-2

June

20

06

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

dsIn

telle

ctua

l His

tory

in P

re-c

olon

ial A

sia

Mas

terc

lass

Con

veno

r(s)

: She

ldon

Pol

lock

Org

aniz

ed b

y II

AS

Con

tact

: Man

on O

ssew

eije

r

m.o

ssew

eije

r@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

June

2006

1 Ju

ne 2

00

6

Buo

n M

a Th

out,

Vie

tNam

Loca

ting

the

Com

mun

al in

Asi

an L

and

Tenu

re

ASE

F-A

llian

ce W

orks

hop

Con

veno

r(s)

: Tho

mas

Sik

or (

Hum

bolt

Uni

vers

ity)

& N

guye

n Ta

n Vu

i (Ta

y N

guye

n

Uni

vers

ity)

thom

as.s

ikor

@rz

.hu-

berl

in.d

e

7-9

June

20

06

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

dsW

riti

ng S

yste

ms

and

Loan

Wor

ds

Sym

posi

um

Org

aniz

ed b

y R

esea

rch

scho

ol C

NW

S

Con

tact

: Ale

x de

Voo

gt

a.j.d

e.vo

ogt@

let.

leid

enun

iv.n

l


> Rubriek > International conference agenda13

-22

June

20

06

Ban

gkok

, Tha

iland

Gen

der

Issu

es in

Asi

a

Con

fere

nce

Org

aniz

ed b

y W

AR

I

conc

ours

e02@

yaho

o.co

m

15- 6

June

20

06

Lond

on, U

nite

d K

ingd

omM

oder

nisa

tion,

Mod

erni

ty a

nd th

e M

edia

in C

hina

Con

fere

nce

Org

aniz

ed b

y C

hina

Med

ia C

entr

e

Con

tact

: Yik

Cha

n C

hin

chin

y@w

min

.ac.

uk

24-2

5 Ju

ne 2

00

6

Bei

jing,

Chi

naG

loba

l Co-

oper

atio

n To

war

ds E

nerg

y Ef

ficie

ncy:

Bar

rier

s an

d O

ppor

tuni

ties

Con

fere

nce

Con

veno

r(s)

: Meh

di A

min

eh &

Shi

Dan

Org

aniz

ed b

y II

AS/

Chi

nese

Aca

dem

y of

Soci

al S

cien

ces

Con

tact

: Mar

loes

Roz

ing

m.r

ozin

g@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

ww

w.ii

as.n

l/iia

s/sh

ow/i

d=55

00

1

25-2

7 Ju

ne 2

00

6

Sing

apor

eC

hine

se N

atio

n, C

hine

se S

tate

, 185

0-20

00

Bia

nnua

l Con

fere

nce

of t

he H

isto

rica

l Soc

iety

for

the

Twen

tiet

h C

entu

ry C

hina

Org

aniz

ed b

y A

sia

Res

earc

h In

stit

ute

Con

tact

: Tho

mas

Dub

ois

hist

dd@

nus.

edu.

sg

26-2

9 Ju

ne 2

00

6

Wol

long

ong,

Aus

tral

iaA

sia

Rec

onst

ruct

ed: F

rom

Cri

tiqu

es o

f

Dev

elop

men

t to

Pos

tdoc

tora

l Stu

dies

Con

fere

nce

Con

veno

r(s)

: Adr

ian

Vic

kers

Org

aniz

ed b

y 16

th B

iann

aul C

onfe

ren

ce

of t

he A

SAA

asaa

@uo

w.e

du.a

u

http

://c

oom

bs.a

nu.e

du.a

u/A

SAA

/Con

fere

nce

27-3

0 Ju

ne 2

00

6

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

ds19

th E

urop

ean

Con

fere

nce

on M

oder

n So

uth

Asi

an S

tudi

es

Con

veno

r(s)

: Dir

k K

olff

Org

aniz

ed b

y II

AS

Con

tact

: Mar

loes

Roz

ing

ecm

sas2

00

6@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

ww

w.e

asas

.org

29 Ju

ne-1

July

20

06

Mün

ster

, Ger

man

yTh

e R

itua

l Art

icul

atio

n of

Cul

tura

l Ide

ntit

y an

d

Soci

opol

itic

al O

rder

in In

done

sia

Con

fere

nce

Con

veno

r(s)

: Jos

Pla

tenk

amp

Org

aniz

ed b

y W

estf

älis

che

Wilh

ems-

Un

iver

-

sitä

t M

ünst

er, I

nst

itut

e fü

r Et

hnol

ogie

Con

tact

: Jos

Pla

tenk

amp

plat

enk@

uni-m

uens

ter.d

e

29 Ju

ne-2

July

20

06

Dep

ok, I

ndon

esia

Law

, Pow

er a

nd C

ultu

re:T

rans

nati

onal

, Nat

iona

l

and

Loca

lPpr

oces

ses

in t

he C

onte

xt o

f Leg

al

Plu

ralis

m

Con

gres

s

Org

aniz

ed b

y C

omis

sion

on

Fol

k La

w a

nd

Lega

l Plu

ralis

m

Con

tact

: Sul

isty

owat

i Iri

anto

sulis

@pa

cifi

c.ne

t.id

ww

w.u

nb.c

a/cf

lp

July

2006

10-1

4 Ju

ly 2

00

6

Edin

gbur

gh, U

nite

d K

ingd

om13

th W

orld

San

skri

t C

onfe

renc

e

Con

fere

nce

Org

aniz

ed b

y In

tern

atio

nal A

ssoc

iati

on o

f

Sans

krit

Con

tact

: Joh

n B

rock

ingt

on

J.L.

Bro

ckin

gton

2ed.

ac.u

k

ww

w.a

rts.

ed.a

c.uk

/san

skri

t/13

thW

SC

13-1

5 Ju

ly 2

00

6

Sing

apor

eC

omm

unit

ies

of In

terp

reta

tion

Bur

ma

Stud

ies

Con

fere

nce

Org

aniz

ed b

y A

sia

Res

earc

h In

stit

ute

Con

tact

: Aly

son

Roz

ells

bsc2

00

6@nu

s.ed

u.sg

ww

w.a

ri.n

us.e

du.s

g/co

nf2

00

6/bs

c20

06.

htm

13-3

1 Ju

ly 2

00

6

Bis

hkek

, Kyr

gyzs

tan

Seco

nd In

tern

atio

nal S

umm

er S

choo

l in

Cen

tral

Asi

a

Org

aniz

ed b

y Ky

rgyz

stan

-Tur

key

Man

as

Uni

vers

ity

Con

tact

: Sam

ara

Turd

alie

va

sum

mer

scho

ol@

man

as.k

g

ww

w.s

umm

ersc

hool

.man

as.k

g

15-1

6 Ju

ly 2

00

6

East

-Osa

ka, J

apan

Emer

ging

Sha

pe o

f Eas

t Asi

an E

cono

mic

Com

mun

ity

Con

fere

nce

Org

aniz

ed b

y Ja

pan

Aca

dem

y fo

r A

sian

Mar

ket

Econ

omie

s

Con

tact

: Tak

ehit

o O

nish

i

onis

hi@

eco.

kind

ai.a

c.jp

ww

w.k

inda

i.ac.

jp

16-3

0 Ju

ly 2

00

6

Esse

n, G

erm

any

Isla

m a

nd t

he R

epos

itio

ning

of R

elig

ion

Sum

mer

aca

dem

y

Con

veno

r(s)

: Geo

rg S

taut

h an

d A

rman

do

Salv

ator

e

Org

aniz

ed b

y In

stit

ute

of A

dvan

ced

Stud

ies

Con

tact

: Arm

in F

lend

er

arm

in@

flen

der@

kwi_

nrw

.de

19-2

0 Ju

ly 2

00

6

Dep

ok, I

ndon

esia

Red

efin

ing

Wor

ld L

iter

atur

es

Sem

inar

Org

aniz

ed b

y D

epar

tmen

t of

Lit

erat

ure,

Fac

ul-

ty o

f Hum

anit

ies,

Un

iver

sity

of I

ndon

esia

Con

tact

: Mel

ani B

udia

nta

susa

tra_

fibu

i@ya

hoo.

com

21-2

3 Ju

ly 2

00

6

Ban

dung

, Ind

ones

iaA

rte-

polis

: Cre

ativ

e C

ultu

re a

nd t

he M

akin

g

Pla

ce

Sem

inar

and

wor

ksho

p on

urb

an c

ultu

re

Org

aniz

ed b

y In

stit

ute

of T

echn

olog

y

Ban

dung

psud

@m

elsa

.net

.id

ww

w.a

r.itb

.ac.

id/a

rtep

olis

28-3

0 Ju

ly 2

00

6

Pal

emba

ng, I

ndon

esia

Loca

l Cul

ture

s an

d it

s M

anife

stat

ions

in

Nus

anta

ra M

anus

crip

ts

10th

Inte

rnat

iona

l Sym

posi

um o

f the

Nus

anta

ra M

anus

crip

t

Org

aniz

ed b

y M

AN

ASS

A

Con

tact

: Tit

ik P

udjia

stut

i

sim

posi

umm

anas

sa20

06@

yaho

o.c

Augu

st 20

063-

4 A

ugus

t 20

06

Sing

apor

eR

atio

nalis

ing

Chi

na’s

Pla

ce in

Asi

a,

1800

to

2005

Con

fere

nce

Con

veno

r(s)

: Zhe

ng Y

angw

en &

Liu

Hon

g

Org

aniz

ed b

y A

sia

Res

earc

h In

stit

ute

ariz

yw@

nus

.edu

.sg

& c

hsliu

h@nu

s.ed

u.sg

20-2

3 A

ugus

t 20

06

Bei

jing,

Chi

naTo

uris

m a

nd t

he N

ew A

sia;

Impl

icat

ions

for

Res

earc

h, P

olic

y an

d P

ract

ice

Con

fere

nce

Con

tact

: Will

iam

Fei

gher

y

wfe

ighe

ry@

belt

ouri

sm.c

om

ww

w.p

kuto

uris

m.c

om

25-2

6 A

ugus

t 20

06

Can

berr

a, A

ustr

alia

Asi

a-P

acifi

cMis

sion

arie

s: A

t H

ome

and

Abr

oad

Seco

nd b

ien

nua

l AN

U m

issi

onar

y hi

stor

y

con

fere

nce

Con

veno

r(s)

: Aus

tral

ian

Nat

iona

l Uni

vers

ity

Org

aniz

ed b

y N

IAP

ian.

wel

ch@

anu.

edu.

au

27 A

ugus

t-2

Sept

embe

r 20

06

Kön

igsw

inte

r/B

onn,

Ger

man

y11

th S

emin

ar

Org

aniz

ed b

y In

tern

atio

nal A

ssoc

iati

on fo

r

Tibe

tan

Stud

ies

Con

tact

: P. S

chw

iege

r

iats

200

6@un

i_bo

nn.d

e

ww

w.ia

ts20

06.

uni-b

onn.

de

Sept

embe

r 200

67-

9 Se

ptem

ber

200

6

Sing

apor

eO

f Asi

an O

rigi

n: R

ethi

nkin

g To

uris

m in

Con

tem

pora

ry A

sia

Wor

ksho

p

Org

aniz

ed b

y A

sia

Res

earc

h In

stit

ute

Con

tact

: Tim

Win

ter

ariw

tc@

nus.

edu.

sg

ww

w.a

ri.n

us.e

du.s

g/co

nf20

06/

tour

ism

.htm

14-1

5 Se

ptem

ber

200

6

Am

ster

dam

, Net

herl

ands

Cri

me,

Law

and

Ord

er in

the

Japa

nese

Em

pire

,

1895

-194

5

Wor

ksho

p

Org

aniz

ed b

y N

IOD

indi

e-in

done

sie@

niod

.nl

21-2

2 Se

ptem

ber

200

6

Shan

ghai

, Chi

naC

hina

and

the

Wor

ld: H

arm

ony

and

Pea

ce

Foru

m

Org

aniz

ed b

y W

orld

For

um o

n C

hina

Stu

dies

Con

tact

: Viv

ien

Lee

vivi

enle

e_vi

vien

lee@

yaho

o.co

m

21-2

3 Se

ptem

ber

200

6

Ber

lin, G

erm

any

From

Dis

tant

Tal

es: A

rcha

eolo

gy a

nd

Ethn

ohis

tory

in t

he H

ighl

ands

of S

umat

ra

Wor

ksho

p

Org

aniz

ed b

y N

atio

nal U

nive

rsit

y of

Sin

ga-

pore

and

the

Fre

e U

nive

rsit

y of

Ber

lin

Con

tact

: Dom

inik

Bon

atz

bona

tz@

zeda

t.fu

-ber

lin.d

e

25-2

7 Se

ptem

ber

200

6

Leid

en, N

ethe

rlan

dsC

ultu

re a

nd C

omm

erce

in t

he In

dian

Oce

an

Con

fere

nce

Con

veno

r(s)

: Hen

k N

iem

eije

r an

d M

icha

el

Pea

rson

Org

aniz

ed b

y Le

iden

Uni

vers

ity

and

Uni

vers

ity

of T

echn

olog

y, S

ydne

y

Con

tact

: The

Org

aniz

ing

Com

mit

tee

indi

an.o

cean

@ut

s.ed

u.au

ww

w.in

dian

ocea

npro

ject

.net

28 S

epte

mbe

r-1

Oct

ober

20

06

Ann

Arb

or, U

nite

d St

ates

CES

S A

nnua

l Con

fere

nce

Con

fere

nce

Org

aniz

ed b

y C

ESS

cess

conf

@fa

s.ha

rvar

d.ed

u

http

://c

ess.

fas.

harv

ard.

edu/

CES

S_

Con

fere

nce.

htm

l

Octo

ber 2

006

24-2

6 O

ctob

er 2

00

6

Dak

ar, S

eneg

alYo

uth

and

the

Glo

bal S

outh

: Rel

igio

ns, P

olit

ics,

and

the

Mak

ing

of Y

outh

in A

fric

a, A

sia,

and

the

Mid

dle

East

Con

fere

nce

Con

veno

r(s)

: The

Ste

erin

g C

omm

itte

e

Org

aniz

ed b

y A

SC/C

OD

ESR

IA/I

SIM

/IIA

S

Con

tact

: Man

on O

ssew

eije

r

m.o

ssew

eije

r@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

ww

w.ii

as.n

l

Nove

mber

2006

15-1

7 N

ovem

ber

200

6

Hav

ana,

Cub

aIn

tern

atio

nal S

ympo

sium

on

Asi

a-P

acifi

c

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/


IIAS Newsletter #40

Spring 2005


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July 2006

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Board

Prof. P. van der Veer - Chairman (Utrecht University)

Prof. P. Spyer (Leiden University)

Prof. B.J. ter Haar (Leiden University)

Dr J. de Jong (Groningen University)

Prof. M. van der Linden (IISG/University of Amsterdam)

Prof. M.A.F. Rutten (University of Amsterdam)

Prof. M. Sparreboom (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)

Academic Committee

Prof. T. Atabaki (IISG/University of Amsterdam)

Dr E.W. Ball (Free University, Amsterdam)

Prof. H. Beukers (Leiden University)

Prof. P.P.S. Ho (University of Groningen)

Dr G. Persoon - Chairman (Leiden University)

Prof. C.I. Risseeuw (Leiden University)

Prof. B.C.A.Walraven (Leiden University)

IIAS Extraordinary Chairs

Prof. H.G.C. Schulte Nordholt (the Netherlands)

Special Chair at the Erasmus University Rotterdam

‘Asian History’

1 October 1999 - 1 October 2007

Prof. H. Steinhauer (the Netherlands)

Special Chair at Nijmegen University

‘Ethnolinguistics with a focus on Southeast Asia’

1 September 1998 - 1 September 2006


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Documents

Introduction - International Institute for Asian Studies