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TheNewsletter 58 Autumn/Winter 2011
George Chinnery enjoyed a double career in the Far East. The first phase was in India, where he rose to become the principal artist of the Raj, a hookah-smoking ‘old hand’ with an Indian mistress and a huge appetite for curry and rice. ‘Chinnery himself could not hit off a likeness better’, exclaims the Colonel back from India, as he admires a portrait in Thackeray’s Newcomes.
How do we get to know foreign cultures in general and Indonesian in particular? Through tourism? Tourists tend to scratch the surface and very selectively at that (many think the holiday ‘paradise’ Bali is an independent nation). Through the media? Media reports on the 2005 tsunami or the sporadic terrorist attacks do not off er a balanced perspective on Indonesia either. No, we can best become familiar with another culture by reading its literary works – and for that to work we need translations.
A review of two fi lms on power: Performances of Authority and Being prominent in Indonesia, a day in the life of Ibu Mooryati.
Research sometimes serves to deconstruct power relations: to show how some groups are disenfranchised, marginalised or removed from histories of nations through literature, fi lm or other cultural practices. Academic work, in such cases, provides theoretical and direct criticisms
of how power structures, institutions, politicians and others, assert power.
Anne L. Foster. 2010. Projections of Power: The United States and Europe in Colonial Southeast Asia, 1919-1941. Durham and London: Duke University Press. xii + 241 pp, ISBN: 978-0-8223-4800-9 (paperback)
‘Nearly all works on United States relations with Southeast Asia have traditionally started their analysis with 1945, or perhaps 1941’, the author observes. (p. 9) Her book adopts a different line. That is welcome in at least two different ways. It tends to bring Southeast Asia into larger and more comparative studies, for example on US imperialism. That diminishes the risk, still prevalent, that Southeast Asia is ghettoised in more general works that draw their evidence and examples from other parts of the world, indeed other parts of Asia.
Symon, A. 2009. Writing from Asia. Newcastle, Australia: Global Exchange. 220 pages, ISBN: 9781876438418 (paperback)
Writing from Asia is a festschrift: a posthumous collection of his research and articles from 2000 to 2009, with a focus on issues that are still unresolved.
Garcia, J. Neil C. 2nd ed. 2009. Philippine Gay Culture: Binabae to Bakla, Silahis to MSM. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. xxv + 537 pages, ISBN 978-962-209-985-2 (paperback)
Tadiar, Neferti XM. 2009. Things Fall Away; Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ix + 484 pages, ISBN 978-0-8223-4446-9 (paperback)
When over lunch, I observed that the authors of the books I had been asked to comment upon characterised the dominant culture as ‘heterosexist, masculinist, and macho’, my lady friend couldn’t restrain a mocking smile, “Macho? Most of these poor devils are decidedly mother dependent, many a wife referring to her consort as her eldest son! When you come down to it, this place is run by women. The big boy just remains that, a big boy, full of bravado, which needs his wife to prop him up.” Her sneer reminded me of Thailand, where the lady of the house is referred to as ‘the hind legs of the elephant’ that would tumble without its mainstay.
Documentary films reveal and conceal. They are truthful without necessarily telling the truth. A film always shows just a slice of reality, and is the product of choices made by the main characters (who reveal certain aspects of their lives on camera) and the filmmakers (who select segments of these revelations to construct a story). When the film is screened, the question is how the main characters, and other audiences, will then decode the narrative. Do they experience the result as truthful? What strikes them as significant and meaningful in the film, and how does this further our understanding of social reality? The anthropological documentary ‘Living Like a Common Man’ (2011), which traces the lives of Indian youngsters who recently migrated to London, was shown to a varied selection of audiences in India and Europe, including the main characters. This article discusses their reactions, recorded by the filmmakers for further study.
Volker Grabowsky & Renoo Wichasin. 2009. Chronicles of Chiang Khaeng: A Tai Lu Principality of the Upper Mekong. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. 424 pages, ISBN: 978-1-930734-02-9 (paperback)
As with the 19th century’s doomed plans to build a railroad linking India to China through the region, wild speculations and crackpot theories have blossomed forth from Western ignorance of “Upland Southeast Asia” – or, particularly, the
mountains that isolate the ethnic minorities of Laos, Burma and Yunnan along the borders that join those countries. Social theories strike out on a bold course, and they head up into the mountains with European aspirations that are incompatible with local cultural reality – not to mention geography – much like the prospect of that abandoned railway.
Although long considered mutually exclusive, biodiversity conservation and food security are two sides of the same coin. Although ecologists and conservation biologists focus primarily on biodiversity conservation in non-agricultural lands it has been recognised that a strictly conservation focus is limited in scope, particularly in terms of fulfi lling production requirements. This is pertinent given that the majority of the world’s biodiversity remains outside of protected areas, often in complex, multi-functional landscapes occupied by people and their associated farming systems, particularly in the tropics.
In Cambodia there is an increasing trend of large land acquisitions, inadequate protection of land rights, and a high incidence of land disputes. About 1.04 million hectares were approved as Economic Land Concessions (ELC) for foreign and domestic companies in 2010, as a means of increasing economic growth and employment. Much of this land is located in the North-eastern provinces, home to indigenous communities that may seriously be aff ected as a result.
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