Papers (Part 1)

• Buddhist Pilgrimages in the Upper Mekong Basin, Revival of Tai (Transnational) Identities: The Case of Phra That Chiang Ngoen, Mueang Hun, Sipsong Panna Sirui Dao Universität Hamburg

  The Theravada Buddhism and Buddhist sites in Sipsong Panna (Xishuang Banna) in China have been tremendously destroyed during several political upheavals from the late 1950s unti the early 1970s. However, since the early 1980s, Buddhism and Buddhist architecture have been restored. This article aims to analyze the revival of transnational religious-ethnic Tai identity from the reconstruction of Buddhist place in the Upper Mekong Basin, through the case of Phra That Chiang Ngoen (Chiang Ngoen Pagoda) in the autonomous Tai prefecture Sipsong Panna. The recent reconstruction of Phra That Chiang Ngoen of Mueang Hun in 2000–2004 is a fine example of an transnational Tai Buddhist network, the agents of which are internationally-renowned holy monks and which are based on transnational donations and trans-border pilgrimage of Buddhist laity. The reconstruction was initiated in 2000, led by Khruba Saeng La (Myanmar), together with Kruba Sin Man (Myanmar) and other three local monks of Sipsong Panna, China. The donations from lay people of Myanmar and Thailand largely contributed to the construction expense. The construction being completed in 2004, Tai people from Myanmar and Thailand also crossed the border to participate in the completion ceremony.

• Death of the Last King: Memory, Identity and Belonging Among the Tai Lue of Sipsong Panna Roger Casas Austrian Academy of Sciences

  On the night of 30 September to 1 October, 2017, Chao Mom Kham Lue, the last chao phaendin, or ‘lord of the land’ of Sipsong Panna (Ch.: Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, China), passed away in a hospital in Kunming. Removed from its former prominence and relegated to a powerless position since the founding of the People’s Republic in the mid-twentieth century, the last ruler of this small, formerly semi-independent polity was for many a symbol of an identity distinguishable from that of the ‘Chinese Nation’ and transcending the country’s borders (Hsieh 1995). After his death, different groups both in and outside China organized appropriated rituals to honour the memory of the former king; at the same time, for many Tai Lue, especially those in younger generations, the event went unnoticed.

  Using the figure of the last ruler of Sipsong Panna to evoke ‘underlying historical processes’ as well as ‘local, national, and transnational discourses about contemporary social life and its futures’ (Barker, Harms and Lindquist 2014), this presentation offers an ethnographically informed exploration of the role that the memory (or lack thereof) of the chao rulers plays in the production of localities among Tai Lue today. Avoiding stereotypical and essentialist notions of identity in this multicultural region, the discussion pays special attention to the resilience of discourses and rituals related to pre-modern forms of power among the Tai peoples of southwest China in a context of profound socioeconomic transformations, and of increasingly vocal demands of allegiance to a national, imagined community.

• Flexible Identities Amongst the Indian Diaspora in Chiang Mai, Thailand Ayuttacorn Arratee Chiang Mai University

  This paper explores identity formations among members of the Indian diaspora in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It also focuses on kinship, economic and religious networks that serve to strengthen cultural notions of an Indian community. The study aims to investigate the ways in which members of the Indian diaspora construct flexible notions of identity to engage with elites and markets in Asian countries as well as their homelands, as they understand and relate with them. Data are traced through Indian diasporic networks in Chiang Mai, in relations with their contacts in other provinces in Thailand, as well as in Myanmar, and the Punjab Region in India. The Indian government issues an overseas citizen of India (OCI) card for Thais of documented Indian heritage; some members of the diaspora avail themselves of this bureaucratic advantage for the advancement of their children’s education, religious connections and authenticity, and economic mobility. At the same time, they find ways to connect with Thai institutions and culture. Members of the Indian diaspora selectively assimilate into Thai society through marriage and religious practices. They also create connection with the Thai royal family and government agencies, and at the same time support marginalized people through social activities. Findings reveal that intercultural communication of Indian diaspora are de-territorialized, flexible and mobile through family, economic and religious networks.

• How Vietnamese Fishermen Forged Their Identity and Regional Belonging in Southeast Asia in the Era of Globalization? Nguyen Quoc-Thanh Lyon Institute of East Asian Studies

  Within Southeast Asia, many identities and cultures stand side by side. Inside this area of cultural richness, the fishermen community remains at the outside with their own stages of development. The question of identity is then probably one of the most sensitive issues for them in the era of globalization. Men of no borders, their community represents a group living beyond all boundaries, with its own traditions dictated by their work, forged by beliefs coming from India, China or elsewhere many centuries ago. More than any other communities, the fishermen are influenced by external cultures. So what is meant by « Identity » when referring to the fishermen? What is the difference between them and those of the hinterland? How can we identify the various stages of their identities’ development? And how do they forge their belonging in Southeast Asia? Beyond these concerns, the answers to these questions will help us to better understand Asian maritime communities. This paper aims to present a case-study research proposal in which Vietnamese fishermen demonstrate their skills to integrate Southeast Asian communities, their ability to take their place and their maritime common identity composed with their individual identities.

• Regional Citizenship Beyond Rights: Assessing Regionalisation of Belonging, Access, and Rights in ASEAN Amalie Weinrich Gothenburg University

  How is citizenship practiced beyond the nation state in ASEAN? The concept of citizenship is present in ASEAN discourse and the organisation’s framework but officially remains confined to the nation state. The idea of Southeast Asian regional citizenship or ASEAN citizenship is not an official part of the organisation’s framework. Yet, as more people move across national borders, traditional conceptions of citizenship are increasingly being challenged and new types of citizenship below and above the nation are emerging.

  In Southeast Asia, citizenship is by and large characterised by the prioritisation of collective regulation over individual rights, contingent membership over universal membership, and subnational and supranational networks and hierarchies over national democratic principles (Chung, 2017; Kennedy, 2016). This conceptualisation of citizenship is also implicitly evident within the ASEAN discourses. Instead of providing individual citizenship rights beyond a single nation state, specific and often case-by-case rights are allocated to groups of people. This is evident in the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, as well as the various protocols on the protection of women and children as well as migrant workers in the region. While citizenship officially remains confined to the nation states, elements of regional citizenship have manifested themselves in the form of individual policies and informal networks. Moreover, through the development the ASEAN community and the Masterplans of each community, we increasingly see an extension of citizenship beyond a single nation state. This trend is also visible in the ASEAN discourse around identity, which is increasingly being promoted with clear regional traits.

  In this paper, the three main dimensions of citizenship, rights, access, and belonging serve as the analytical framework and are used to assess how ASEAN is practicing citizenship at the regional scale. The paper is situated within current conceptual discussions in citizenship studies and regionalism. Yet, the paper stands to contribute important new findings from an under-researched case – ASEAN.

  The paper makes use of empirical data gathered during field research in five ASEAN Member States: Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, and Thailand, which took place between November 2018 and February 2019. It includes interviews conducted with senior officials from the ASEAN Political-Security Community, the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, with national representatives to ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC), as well as with senior officers at the ASEAN Secretariat (ASEC) and the ASEAN Foundation. Additionally, material from semi-structured interviews with eleven international organisations working on citizenship, migration, regional integration, and human rights in Southeast Asia are used for the analysis of the paper.

Papers (Part 2)

• Accounting for Applications and Appeals: Identity Economy Among Ethnically Diverse Civil Society Organizations in Urban Sarawak Asmus Rungby University of Copenhagen

  Decades of urbanization in the Malaysia’s Bornean states has led to the rapid growth of Kuching, the state capital of Sarawak, bringing with it the emergence of ethnically diverse civil society organizations who employ novel articulations of ethnic, regional, and professional identities. Based on long-term fieldwork among these civil society organizations in Kuching this article proposes a new analytical frame, Identity economy, for attending to these new interplays of multiple identity categories in empirical detail. I argue that by thinking in terms of economy, in the sense of a Derridean textual economy, it becomes possible to examine identity language with greater attention to organizations’ use of regional, statist, professional, and ideological identities. This argument proceeds through two phases. First, I show how Kuching’s civil society organizations employ complex and often shifting uses of identity language and survey the expansive literature on identity in Borneo to demonstrate how this empirical material exemplifies and exacerbates long-standing problems of scholarly terminology for identity issues in Bornean anthropology. Second, I delve further into the Kuching’s civil society organizations’ increasing use of regional (Kuching, Sarawak, Borneo) and professional identities to demonstrate how these appeals are both instrumental applications of meaningful impactful language and reflects Sarawakian regional antipathies towards the Malaysian federal goverment. This framework, I conclude, enables a deeper understanding of how Kuching’s ethnically diverse civil society organizations form appeals via plural identities for their multifarious agendas by both building on and intervening in long-standing anthropological debates on identity in Borneo.

• Democratic Kampuchea’s Revolutionary Terror in the 1970s: The Role of the Cambodian Youth in State Supported and Grassroots Violence Volker Grabowsky Universität Hamburg

  This presentation seeks to analyse how the leadership of the Communist Party of Kampuchea led by Pol Pot exploited the idealism of the Cambodian youth for their political ends. It also aims to investigate how far the violence of the 1970s was instigated by the Communist leadership and to what extent local “grassroots” actors played a more decisive role. The project will study the mechanisms of recruitment of cadres and soldiers into the military and political apparatus of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and its mass organizations. Special attention is given to the relationship between young people from rural areas (belonging to the privileged category of “old people) and their peers who came from resettled urban families (“new people”) and were stigmatized as class enemies. The role of young people – male and female – as spies and informants, as members of the army, and as security guards will be examined as well. Apart from a survey of the published literature, the researcher will conduct archival research in Phnom Penh. Field trips to Anlong Veng and Pailin, where thousands of ex-Khmer Rouge families have been resettled, will be made to conduct semi-structured interviews with former Khmer Rouge cadres and soldiers as well as with their victims.

• Ethno-Religious Entanglements, Tensions, and Violence in the Bengal-Burma Borderlands (Chittagong and Sittway Districts) 1920–1960 Jacques Leider Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient

  The border region of Bangladesh and Myanmar has been the theatre of three mass flights during the last 30 years linked to accusations of systematic state-persecution against the Muslims in North Rakhine State (now widely known as Rohingyas) allegedly perpetrated by the Myanmar state. The present project addresses the historical roots of economic tensions, social disruption and political violence that form part of the historical background of the contemporary conundrum and investigates how violence is linked to identity formations. The presentation at this panel will introduce the competition of local elites in the spatial context of a contested border area and track a timeline that includes the late colonial and early independence period with WW II forming a central disruptive moment producing and feeding a continuum of ongoing violence. Exploring the origins of an ongoing, but poorly documented conflict that has pitted ethno-religious groups against each other and against the state does not only make the collection and analysis of historical facts an important task, it invites also a critical awareness of the nature of sources which do generally report from a far distant centre and blur thus the visibility and audibility of processes, actors and voices.

• Local Lao Identity and Vietnamese Labour Mobility: The Case of the Tin Mines in Khammouane, Laos Oliver Tappe Universität Hamburg

  Artisanal tin mining formed part of the livelihoods of the population of the Nam Phathaene valley (Khammouane Province, central Laos) since precolonial times. In the 1920s, the French established industrial mining in the valley. Lao labour shortage was met with the recruitment of Vietnamese workers. Ever since the region was marked by the co-presence of industrial, small-scale and artisanal mining. This paper investigates the lifeworlds of Lao peasant-miners and Vietnamese labour migrants in the tin mines of Khammouane, and discusses questions of local and regional identity.

• Malayness on Stage: Cultural Spectacle and Identity Formation in the Malay World A Re-Emerging Riau Sultan Providing a Modern Islamic Touch to Traditional Malay Customs Alan Darmawan Universität Hamburg Jan van der Putten Universität Hamburg

  The early nineteenth century witnessed the division of the Malay kingdoms situated in the Malacca Straits region into the British and the Dutch colonial spheres of influence. This separation has had profound consequences for the post-colonial nation-states in Southeast Asia until the present day. The Malaysian Federation of National Writers (GAPENA) made attempts in the 1980s to repair cultural connections between Indonesia and Malaysia, which in the following decade was continued in a series of dialogues and art festivals organized to boost a transnational Malay movement. This way Malay activists and performers try to strengthen Malay brotherhood across national borders and embody the imagination of Malayness through aesthetic representations in stage performances. Across the border, changes in Indonesian politics triggered the development of Malayness as an overall identity of the Sumatra Island. Administrative decentralization programmes provide opportunities for national and transnational bonding to connect more intensely with the Malay world at large and conclude agreements with economic partners in the neighboring countries building on a shared identity of Melayu serumpun. Implementing such decentralization programmes, the Indonesian provinces in Sumatra have ambitions to become the cultural homeland of the Malays. In such reconfigurations of cultural identity we argue that the provinces of Riau and the Riau Islands are both in a contest to obtain this denomination of homeland. Dialogues and festivals that move around in South Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra function to promote and endorse such vision. Our research focuses on efforts taking place in the Riau Islands in the form of the art festivals. More particularly, it deals with how youngsters in the Riau islands, who are not necessarily ethnic Malays, perform Malayness at festivals in the neighboring regions and countries. Another part of the research deals with how two other elements of the configuration of traditional Malay identity, Islam and Royalty, are reinvented in the Riau Islands.

• The Rise of Militant Christianity in the Philippines Jayeel Cornelio Ateneo de Manila University

  This presentation offers new ways of critically assessing the vibrancy of Christianity in the Philippines. The premise is that it is diverse. While it is important to discuss the fortunes of Catholicism, the dominant religion, it is also crucial for new analyses to factor in the emergence of new religious groups. The first point is that this diversity is militant. In the literature, Militant Christianity refers to fundamentalism and its triumphalist disposition toward different spheres of society. These facets have some local resonances. Although many new Christian groups have emerged over the years, their general theological character is fundamentalist, which spills over into their political choices. In this sense, the religious economy, while competitive, also has a predictable trait. The second characteristic is that it is global. The global expansion of many groups has been made possible by the movement of Filipinos to work around the world. But explaining it only in this manner is no longer adequate. The global character of Filipino Christianity is a result too of a postcolonial assertion. Many religious leaders are convinced that Filipinos have a calling to evangelize the world. The sacralisation of Filipino citizenship inverts the shame that used to accompany its global labor force. This presentation will focus on the religious frames surrounding Southeast Asia.

• We’re Not Europeans After All: Consumption, Performativity and Southeast Asian Identity Among Filipino Migrants in Brussels and Paris Aaron Raphael Ponce Université Libre de Bruxelles

  Current literature focuses on the historical Anglo-Europeanisation of Filipino cultural identity as a result of colonial contact with Spain and the United States, whereby language, aesthetics, architecture, religious values and consumer behavior is influenced by Spanish Catholicism and American consumerism, thus resulting in the notion of similarity and sympathy with these Western societies (see Guéraiche, 2013). In the context of migration, the ability to speak American-style English and resonance with Catholic values has been conventionally interpreted as a tool of integration among first-generation Filipino migrant workers as well as second- and succeeding generation Filipinos in Europe and the United States, who use their familiarity with these systems as a means to distinguish themselves from other Asian migrant communities (Aguilar 1996; Gonzales, 1998; Wolf, 2002). In these cases, the Americanization of language and cultural capital is seen as a factor leading to cultural and political dissonance between Filipino migrants and other communities from Southeast Asia, especially in Anglophone countries.

  Using results gained from two years of participant observation among first- and second-generation Filipino migrants in Paris and Brussels, and interpreted through the lens of urban anthropology and the sociology of migration, this paper has two aims. First, it seeks to demonstrate that in non-Anglophone environments where American cultural influence is minimal (particularly in francophone Paris and Brussels), Filipino migrants reconstruct their Southeast Asian identity as a tool to integrate with their host societies, especially capitalizing on the stereotype of the Asian as a hard worker and model minority. Second, we shall demonstrate how this has fostered transnational ties between Filipino migrants and other Southeast Asian migrant groups (particularly the Vietnamese and Thai) to facilitate the creation of distinctly Southeast Asian spaces, commercial trade, and cultural performativity in these Franco-European cosmopolitan centers. In the end, this paper shall also present how Filipino migrants together with other Southeast Asian migrant groups rely on these cross-community ties, especially with regards to the flow of material goods, forging a distinct diasporic Southeast Asian identity separate from the complexities of the geo-political ties in the Southeast Asian region.

Abstract

Keywords

• ASEAN
• Belonging
• Ethnicity
• Identity