Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Pheng Cheah, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and University of California – Berkeley, USA

PANEL SPEAKERS

Assco Prof Johan Lindquist, Dr Jerome Whitington, and Dr Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied will introduce and discuss the book project, which has brought together over 80 authors working across Southeast Asia.

ABSTRACT

We live in a world populated not just by individuals but by figures, those larger-than-life people who in some way express and challenge our conventional understandings of social types. This innovative and collaborative work takes up the wide range of figures that populate the social and cultural imaginaries of contemporary Southeast Asia—some familiar only in specific places, others recognizable across the region and even globally. It puts forward a series of ethnographic portraits of figures that represent and give voice to something larger than themselves, offering a view into social life that is at once highly particular and general. They include the Muslim Television Preacher in Indonesia, Miss Beer Lao, the Rural DJ in Thailand, the Korean Soap Opera Junkie in Burma, the Filipino Seaman, and the Photo Retoucher in Vietnam.

Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity brings together the fieldwork of over eighty scholars and covers the nine major countries of the region: Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. An introduction outlines important social transformations in Southeast Asia and key theoretical and methodological innovations that result from ethnographic attention to the study of key figures. Each section begins with an introduction by a country editor followed by short essays offering vivid and intimate portraits set against the background of contemporary Southeast Asia. The result is a volume that combines scholarly rigor with a meaningful, up-to-date portrayal of a region of the world undergoing rapid change. A reference bibliography offers suggestions for further reading.

The table of contents is available here: http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/books/barkerFiguresContents.pdf

The introduction to the book is available here: http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/books/barkerFiguresIntro.pdf

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Johan Lindquist is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at ARI. He is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University in Sweden. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University and BA in Cultural Anthropology from Uppsala University. He is the author of The Anxieties of Mobility: Development and Migration in the Indonesian Borderlands (University of Hawai’i Press, 2009) and his documentary film B.A.T.A.M. is available from Documentary Educational Resources. He is one of the main editors of Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity and one of the country editors for the Indonesia section of the book.

Jerome Whitington is a Research Fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Cluster in ARI and a Teaching Fellow at Tembusu College. He received his PhD and MA in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and BA in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. An anthropologist specializing in climate change and energy, his research documents emerging regimes to manage the chemical composition of the atmosphere, with focus on the atmosphere as a technical medium for new global relationships. He edited a special issue of the journal Parallax titled Science and the Political. His dissertation deals with risk communication, activism and new techniques of environmental management for hydropower dams. A native of Austin, Texas, he has lived in Thailand and Laos for about six years. He is the editor of the Laos section in Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.

Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied is Assistant Professor of Malay Studies at NUS. He has a long-standing interest in the history of colonialism and the enduring impact of decolonization in the Malay World, particularly in the areas of identity politics, anti-colonial movements and colonial state practice. At the heart of his research is a preoccupation with how individuals and collectives from different backgrounds interact with one another, including their respective strategies of survival and their responses to the challenges posed by the policies, practices and perceptions of colonial and postcolonial states. He is the editor of the Singapore section in Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would gratefully request that you RSVP to Jonathan Lee at jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg