There is a very dense traffic of popular culture products criss-crossing national and cultural boundaries of locations with predominantly ethnic Chinese population in Asia. The economics, the producer and consumer populations contained within the spaces delineated – the PRC, particularly its major cities, Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore – by this traffic can be designated …

WPS 29 Gossips about Stars: Newspaper and Pop Culture China Read More »

The 15th century was a period of intense interaction between Ming China and Southeast Asia. The period saw the Ming invade Ðại Việt, expand the scope of the Chinese polity by exploiting and then incorporating Tai polities of upland Southeast Asia, and launch a succession of hugely influential maritime armadas which travelled through Southeast Asia …

WPS 28 Ming China and Southeast Asia in the 15th Century: A Reappraisal Read More »

Cambodia’s 15th century is nearly a blank page: no inscriptions, insignificant architecture, largely fictional chronicles, and little information in the records of other countries. But we may assume that processes similar to what may be ascertained in other parts of Southeast Asia were at work: changes in state formation, shift of political centers, growth of …

WPS 27 Cambodia and its Neighbors in the 15th Century Read More »

The Singaporean film Forever Fever projects a particular representation of Asian (read: Singaporean Chinese) masculinity that is as comfortable in its hybrid localized global identity as Singlish uniquely captures the grassroots national identity. Using Kam Louie’s model of ideal Chinese masculinities symbolized by the wen scholar and the more physical-oriented wu male, this paper argues …

WPS 26 The Asian Male Spectacle in Glen Goei’s Film That’s The Way I Like It (a.k.a. Forever Fever) Read More »

All over the world today, indigenous peoples still face acute discrimination on their own native soils. While South-east Asian States ride the waves of globalisation and modernisation, indigenous peoples are increasingly nudged onto the periphery of modern society as they are stripped of their land by the advance of State developmental policies. The international community’s …

WPS 25 Sagong Tasi: Reconciling State Development and Orang Asli Rights in Malaysian Courts Read More »

There has been intense scholars’ concern in the social impact of new information communication technologies (ICTs) from the early 1990s. Foremost among these is the idea of the Internet’s democratizing potential, which is supposed to revitalize the public sphere and improve participatory democracy. Many proponents of this idea are western democracy enthusiasts who believe that …

WPS 24 User Behavior and the Impact of the Internet: A Study on Chinese Net Users in Beijing and Shanghai Read More »

Arguments have been made for structural forces and religion as key factors in explaining for why fertility rates among Malays supercede that of Chinese and Indians in Malaysia. Such arguments, however, fail to highlight the role of culture in determining fertility. Bringing culture into the forefront in an analysis of fertility trends forms the nub …

WPS 23 A Culture of Cherishing Children: Fertility Trends of Tertiary-Educated Malay Women in Malaysia Read More »