This workshop is part of the project “Archiving the Underclasses: Knowledge, Law, and Everyday Agency in Modern Southeast Asia”, funded by a Tier 2 grant from the Singapore Ministry of Education.
This workshop gathers scholars to collectively consider the role of marginalized figures—including slum residents, borderland villagers, crime witnesses, and hired interpreters—in the collection of state intelligence. We view “intelligence” broadly, including not only the strategic information needed to defeat enemies in battle, but also the mundane or jealously-guarded knowledge held by marginal people and coveted by the state. Through our empirical research on a variety of Southeast Asian historical contexts, we argue that scholars must attend not only to the intelligence collection practices of authorities, but especially to the ways marginal figures molded that intelligence as they provided and translated testimony.
The workshop will build on the scholarly consensus that institutions transform knowledge as it is incorporated into the archives and similar collections. Our contribution is to show that information is also transformed—often dramatically—well before it ever reaches the halls of government or the shelves of archival repositories. With an empirical focus on Southeast Asia, our papers will redirect scholarly attention to the moments of contact in which information providers and information collectors engage with each other “on the ground”.
WORKSHOP CONVENORS
Assoc Prof Maitrii AUNG-THWIN
Asia Research Institute, and Department of History, National University of Singapore
Asst Prof Matthew REEDER
Department of History, National University of Singapore
Ms Aishah Alhadad
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
REGISTRATION
Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this workshop has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.
