News

Dr Felicia Hughes-Freeland  (Swansea University) has been promoted to Reader as of October 2009. Felicia and her colleague Chris Barrows organised the recent 24th Aseasuk conference held in September (see conference report).  She also delivered a paper at the conference on ‘Women’s impacts on cinema in post-Suharto Indonesia:  beyond the ‘victim-virago dichotomy’. At the Association of Social Anthropologists of UK and the Commonwealth’s (ASA) conference on Anthropological and Archaeological Imaginations: Past, Present and Future, held at Bristol University in April this year, Felicia co-convened with Dr Penny Dransart (Lampeter) a panel on ‘Monumentalizing the Past, Archaeologies of the Future’where she contributed a paper on ‘The seduction of stones: monuments as narratives of nationhood’. Felicia also gave two papers at the British Museum in June: at the screening of her two films, The dancer and the dance and Tayuban: dancing the spirit in Java, as well as a gallery talk on ‘Javanese dance rhythms in court and country’.  Her book Embodied communities: dance traditions and change in Java (Berghahn 2008) has been translated by Gadjah Madah University Press (Kommunitas yang terwujud, 2009)

Dr Matthew Cohen (Royal Holloway) has recently completed a book for Palgrave Macmillan titled Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905-1952, which is due out late 2010. He was at the University of Tampere, Finland, in October 2009 where he spoke on ‘Glocalizing wayang: Javanese shadow puppet theatre in Indonesia, Malaysia, the United States and elsewhere’ at the International Conference of Stage Animation. On 18 March 2010 he gave a public lecture to the Anglo-Indonesian Society on ‘Wayang kulit: traditional and post-traditional shadow puppet theatre’ at the Indonesian Embassy, London. Last year in October and November, Matthew also performed as a dhalang at Cambridge University’s Festival of Ideas (with the Cambridge University gamelan group) and at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (with the Southbank Gamelan Players).

Dr Katherine Brickell (Royal Holloway) has been awarded a British Academy Small Research Grant of £7,500 for a project titled  ‘Cooking up Change? Housekeeping Competitions as Gendered Development: Interventions in Vietnam’. She is organising the first ever housekeeping competition in Vietnam which will involve men as participants. The event is to be held in June 2010 in collaboration with the Vietnam Women's Union. Katherine is currently in Laos until June 2010 conducting her ASEASUK-funded project titled 'Gender, Labour and Domestic Life in Luang Prabang'.

Professor Roy Ellen (University of Kent) was in Maluku, Indonesia in August 2009 for fieldwork on Seram and Kei Kecil on the sociocultural concomitants of cassava diversity in relation to environmental security. Roy’s collaborative research with Dr Hermien Soselisa of Pattimura University, Ambon, is funded by the British Academy/ASEASUK Research Committee.

Dr Lee Jones (Queen Mary, University of London) is currently completing a book on ASEAN, social conflict and intervention in Southeast Asia. He will soon start work on two new projects. The first is a joint project on ‘Securitisation and the Governance of Non-Traditional Security in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific’ with Dr Shahar Hameiri of Murdoch University, Australia. The second is a major project on the ways in which international economic sanctions work (or do not work) to effect regime change. Lee presented the following two papers recently:  ‘ASEAN’s security role and its future: the case for modesty’, at the International Expert Workshop on ASEAN, Asia-Pacific Multilateralism and the Evolving Regional Security Architecture, Singapore, 15-16 October 2009, and ‘The domestic roots of security policy in Southeast Asia’,  International Studies Association annual conference, New Orleans, 17-20 February 2010.

Following Michael Hitchcock's move to Lucerne, Dr Annabel Gallop (British Library) has replaced Mike as co-director of the BIAA-ASEASUK research project ‘Islam, Trade and Politics across the Indian Ocean’.  She is also currently working on a joint British Library-British Museum photographic exhibition, ‘Lasting Impressions: Seals from the Islamic World’, which will travel to libraries in Liverpool, Leicester, Sheffield, London and Cambridge later this year. 

Professor Duncan McCargo (University of Leeds) was working on the politics of justice in Thailand at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy, from 22 March to 19 April 2010. This was after he’d spent July-August 2009 in Betong, Yala, Southern Thailand, conducting fieldwork on justice by attending court cases and interviewing people with firsthand knowledge of the legal system in the southern border provinces. This fieldwork was funded by the ASEASUK Research Committee. Duncan has also published op-ed pieces in The Independent (February 2010) and the Guardian Weekly (December 2009); the second of these was also published in more than a dozen other papers worldwide. He delivered eight conference papers from March 2009 to March 2010: ‘Kru-Ze and Tak Bai 2004: “Security blunders” or simple atrocities in Southern Thailand?’ Insurgencies, Counterinsurgency and Atrocities Workshop, Graduate School in Arts and Humanities, University of Reading, 20 March 2010; ‘Thailand’s electioneering: electoral professional parties vs hybridised clientelism’, Workshop on Democratisation and New Forms of Voter Mobilisation in Southeast Asia, IDEAS, London School of Economics, 12 February 2010; ‘Patani militant leaflets and the uses of history’, Invited speaker for ‘The Phantasm in Southern Thailand: Historical Writings on Patani and the Islamic World’, organised by Walailak University and Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 11-12 December 2009; ‘Kit nai sing thi mai at kit dai: “autonomy” nai phuen thi phak tai khong thai [Thinking the unthinkable? Autonomy for Southern Thailand], Keynote address, 10th National Conference on Political Science and Public Administration, Prince of Songkhla University International Convention Center, Hat Yai, Thailand (audience of 1600), 1 December 2009; ‘Thai citizens but not Thai people: the Malay Muslim quandary’, Invited speaker, International Symposium on Ethnic Minorities in Asia: Subjects or Citizens? Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 25-26 June 2009; ‘How far is Thai Buddhism an asset for the building of democracy?’ Invited speaker, Conference on Religion, Power and Societies in Southeast Asia: The Democratization Test, Asia Centre, Sciences Po, Paris, 12 June 2009; ‘The world of Thai judges: some preliminary thoughts’, Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, USA, 26-29 March 2009, and ‘Southern Thailand as a political problem’, Invited speaker, ‘Southern Thailand: Anatomy of an Insurgency’, ISEAS, Singapore, 10-11 March 2009. Duncan also presented 20 seminar papers between February 2009 and March 2010 on the following topics: ‘The Khmer Rouge Tribunal: some preliminary reflections’, Asian Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, Oxford, 4 March 2010, Asia Center, Harvard University, 26 February 2010, and GSID, Nagoya University, Japan, 17 November 2009  ‘Tearing apart the land: Islam and legitimacy in Southern Thailand’, Center for the Study of Asia, Boston University, 26 February 2010, George Washington University and Asia Society, Washington DC, 23 February 2010; ‘Tearing apart the land: the political basis of Thailand's Southern conflict’, Ritsumeikan University, Japan, 18 November 2009, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan, 18 November 2009; ‘Making sense of the Southern Thai conflict’, CUSEAF, King’s College, University of Cambridge, 15 October 2009; ‘Thailand's turbulent politics since the 2006 coup’, City University of Hong Kong, 7 September 2009, LKY School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 24 June 2009, and GIGA, Hamburg, 13 May 2009; ‘The problem of conflict in Southern Thailand and ways of addressing the issue’ (in Thai), Thailand Research Fund Forum, Bangkok, 20 August 2009; ‘Thai perspectives on terrorism and counter-terrorism’, Universiti Utara Malaysia,  4 August 2009; ‘Tearing apart the land: understanding Thailand’s southern conflict’, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 3 April 2009, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Ohio University, 1 April 2009, Northern Illinois University, 30 March 2009; and ‘Autonomy for Southern Thailand: thinking the unthinkable?’ IAPS, University of Nottingham, 26 February 2009.

Professor V.T. King (University of Leeds) is collaborating with Professors Mike Parnwell (Leeds) and Mike Hitchcock (IMI, Switzerland), and Dr Janet Cochrane (Leeds Metropolitan University) on the British Academy-ASEASUK Research Committee funded project: 'The management of UNESCO world heritage sites in Southeast Asia: cross-cultural perspectives'. Terry is also part of the research team coordinated and funded by Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea, on the theme of ‘Southeast Asia as an Open Regional System’. He attended the  ‘Asian Urban and Heritage Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities’ at the 2nd UNESCO-ICCROM Asian Academy for Heritage Management Conference, in December 2009 organised by the Institute for Tourism Studies in Macau. He is also co-editing a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research with a selection of the papers given at the conference. He was at the 2010 SIEAS International Conference of Research Clusters: The Historical Construction of Southeast Asia, 19-20 March 2010 at Sogang University, Seoul, where he presented a paper on ‘The development of Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom (and Europe): the making of a region’. Terry is also writing a book on  'Identities in motion: the sociology of cultural change in Southeast Asia' which is about two-thirds finished. He has signed a contract with Routledge for a revised second edition of Victor T. King and William D. Wilder, The modern anthropology of South-East Asia: an introduction. He and Mike Parnwell have produced a joint paper on ‘UNESCO world heritage sites in Thailand: a comparative and critical appraisal' which will be included in the Leeds East Asia Papers, new series No. 1, 2010, soon to be posted on the East Asian Studies website, University of Leeds.

Dr Claudia Merli is Teaching Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Durham. She was in southern Thailand for fieldwork in April 2009 and December 2009–January 2010. Between March 2009 and 2010 she presented the following papers  on her research: ‘Context-bound theodicies: when God, nature and politics meet’, Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, Durham University, 5 May 2010;  ‘Context-bound theodicies in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami’, Thai Forum, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds, 29 April 2010; ‘Traditional midwives in southern Thailand and the hybridization of birth cosmology’, Oxford's Southeast Asia Seminar Series, St Antony’s College, Oxford, 12 February 2009; ‘Between scary tales and scarred genes: hybrid cosmologies of placental oddities in southern Thailand’, Medical Anthropology Research Group Seminar, Durham University, 28 January 2009; ‘Male circumcision free of charge: dynamics and locations of khao sunat in Muslim Southern Thailand’, 25th ASEASUK Conference at Swansea University, 11–13 September 2009; ‘When the hospital goes to the mosque: reflections on the encounter between medical and religious rituals of circumcision in Thailand’, 6th Nordic Medical Anthropology Conference, Gothenburg University, Sweden 11–­13 June 2009; and ‘On culture and its use in contemporary medicalising discourses on trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder’, International workshop on ‘Making Cross-Cultural Sense: Coming to Terms with the Concept of ‘Culture,’ at Uppsala University, Sweden, 13 March 2009.

Professor Robert Barnes (Oxford University) gave a paper on ‘What is left out of kinship’ at the conference on Crow-Omaha systems at the Amerind Foundation, Dragoon, Arizona, 27 February – 3 March 2010. In March he was also at The Hague for two weeks of research into eastern Indonesian history in the Nationaal Archief.

Dr Carool Kersten (King’s College London) is currently researching on ‘Cosmopolitan Islam: mapping alternative Islamic discourses in Indonesia’. He delivered four papers late last year: ‘Indonesia’s cosmopolitan Muslims and the mediation of cultural Islam’ at the Biannual International Forum on Asia-Middle East Studies: ‘Transcending Borders: Asia, the Middle East and the Global Community’, US Naval Academy, Annapolis, USA, 16-17 October 2009; ‘Islam in post-Suharto Indonesia’, Cambridge University Southeast Asia Forum (CUSEAF), St Catherine’s College, 13 November 2009; ‘Alternative Islamic discourses in Southeast Asia: the case of Indonesia’, Social Science and Religion Seminar, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, 19 November 2009; and ‘Cultural Islam, civil Islam, cosmopolitan Islam: mediating alternative Islamic discourses in Indonesia’, Chatham House, Indonesia Forum, London, 30 November 2009.

Dr Fiona Kerlogue (Horniman Museum) is currently researching the Horniman Museum’s collections of photographs from 1930s Bali in preparation for a year-long exhibition to open at the Museum in April 2011. She presented a paper on ‘Textiles of Jambi, Sumatra’ at a seminar on ‘Cultures of Cloth in Sumatra, Indonesia’, Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, USA, on April 17 2009.

SOAS, Centre of South East Asian Studies

Dr Elizabeth Moore is on sabbatical research leave for 2009-10 academic session. She was Research Fellow at the National University Singapore, July-October 2009 and subsequently based in Yangon with research trips to Yunnan, Hanoi, Bangkok and Singapore. Whilst in Malaysia she completed signatures for the SOAS-ATMA Memorandum of Understanding.

Elizabeth has also presented the following papers: ‘Debating the origins of bronze production in Myanmar’, Yunnan University, 29 March 2010; ‘Myanmar bronzes and the Dian cultures of Yunnan’, Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association (IPPA) Conference, Hanoi, 1-5 December 2009; ‘The beginnings of Buddhist archaeology and the Shan Plateau’, Shan Studies Conference, Chulalongkorn University 15-18 October 2009; 
‘The Williams-Hunt Collection, aerial photographs and cultural landscapes in Malaysia and Southeast Asia’, (ATMA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 13 October 2009; ‘Public art and the Shwedagon pagoda in the 19th-20th century’, roundtable held at Asian Research Institute, Singapore 29 September 2009, Audio online http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/publication_details.asp?pubtypeid=AU&pubid=1496; ‘New archaeological evidence from the Southern Silk Road’, for the Nalanda Srivijaya Series, Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore, 16 September 2009; ‘Thagara ancient city, maritime Pyu and later archaeology 
in southern Myanmar’, Thai-Burma Group, National University of Singapore, 28 August 2009.

Research project – Radboud University Nijmegen and University of Cambridge

State of Anxiety: A comparative ethnography of ‘security groups’ in Indonesia

The ‘State of Anxiety’ project, a bilateral collaboration between Radboud University Nijmegen and the University of Cambridge, began in November 2009.  Led by Frans Hüsken,* the researchers on the project, Laurens Bakker (Radboud) and Lee Wilson (Cambridge) will conduct a multi-sited ethnography of local security groups in Java, Bali, Kalimantan and Sulawesi.  The project investigates the political influence these groups wield within their domains, their relationships with elements of the police and military as well local networks of criminality.  A particular focus of the research is local conceptions of safety and threat, the ways insecurity figures in the affirmation of difference and processes of identification.  How do these discourses of insecurity both facilitate political agency and exacerbate identity-based conflict between groups?

Under the rule of President Soeharto’s New Order, ‘security’ was a central tenet of nationalist political imaginaries.  While the New Order was able to forcefully maintain order, disorder and instability were its constant companions (Day 2002), a means of justifying violent intervention and oppression.  Post New Order, decentralisation and regional autonomy have facilitated the burgeoning growth of sites of non-state authority throughout Indonesia.  Guerrilla movements, civil militias, community organisations and NGOs are just some of the many kinds of non-state agents whose authority contests or exceeds that of the state within their domains.  Claiming to preserve the safety of their local communities, common to these sites of localised authority are familiar discourses of exclusion and territorial control that are often cited as the hallmark of sovereign relations in modernity.  Custom and tradition, often linked to the issue of control of land and natural resources, are offered as principles of local governance and a countervailing force to the authority of the state.

The research explores the extent to which these groups in Indonesia might be considered as examples of ‘de facto’ sovereignty (Hansen and Stepputat 2006).  Bringing into question the recent anthropological fascination with the homicidal tendencies of sovereign authority, with the ‘state of exception’ (Agamben 2005) as a paradigm for modern forms of government, a central theoretical question the team will address is to what degree are constellations of sovereign authority reducible solely to the capacity for the destruction of bodies?  In exploring this question the team aims to establish the structural factors and processes of identification pertinent to the mobilisation and manipulation of ethnic, religious or political identities in the respective field sites.  The broader relevance of this research will be explored with respect to identity-based conflict elsewhere in Indonesia, and comparatively in other post-authoritarian contexts. 

* Aseasuk notes with sadness that Professor Huskens passed away on 28 April 2010.

ABROAD

Dr Peter Carey (Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Oxford) is currently living and working in Jakarta as Country Director for the Cambodia Trust (CT) – the UK Disability charity which he helped set up in 1989 – and as Project Director for the new Jakarta School of Prosthetics & Orthotics (JSPO). For further information see:  www.cambodiatrust.org.uk

As of mid February 2010, Professor Michael Hitchcock who was Dean at Chichester University, is now the new Academic Director and Dean of Faculty at IMI University Centre, Lucerne, Switzerland. He can be contacted at michael.hitchcock@imi-luzern.com

Professor Robert H. Taylor is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong.