This volume makes an important and unique contribution to scholarly understandings of migration and diversity through its focus on Asian contexts. Current scholarship and literature on processes of migration and the consequences of diversity is heavily concentrated on Western contexts and their concerns with “multiculturalism”, “integration”, “rights and responsibilities”, “social cohesion”, “social inclusion”, and “cosmopolitanism”. …
India’s ‘Maoist movement’, erupting in the village of Naxalbari in 1967, claims to struggle for the rights of exploited tribal people and poor peasants. To Indian governments, however, the movement is fomented by crazed ideologues exploiting vulnerable citizens. Since 2003 when a landmine nearly killed the Chief Minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, hundreds …
More than Maoism: Politics, Policies and Insurgencies in South China Read More »
For many years, Singapore was believed to be a middle-class society. However, recent statistics and studies reveal growing stratifications within the middle-class bulge. This paper shines the spotlight onto a specific group of Singaporeans – the elderly – and examines the extent and implications of social stratification among them. Drawing upon life-history interviews with elderly persons …
This paper provides the first detailed account of the development of Ceylonese Buddhism in colonial-period Singapore. It tracks the development of Buddhist spaces in Singapore oriented towards Pali-language authoritative texts and liturgy, focusing on Ceylonese Buddhism but alert also to the activities of Thai, Burmese, and Chinese Buddhists. In contrast to Burma and Ceylon, British …
This collection documents the different ways in which Asian governments have been pursuing economic nationalism even as they have been integrating with the world economy. The book challenges the popular view that with globalization, either the role of the state becomes redundant or that states are unable to purposefully intervene in the economy. The book …
The book presents a thoroughly revised edition, English translation, and study of the Dharma Patanjala, an Old Javanese-Sanskrit Saiva scripture transmitted through a single palm-leaf codex of West Javanese origin dating back to the 15th century AD. The cultural and doctrinal background of the text, as well as its codicological and philological aspects, are introduced …
This working paper is an article that complements my short film, A Day in the Life of a Mall (http://www.youtube.com/user/kitlvrtf). The short film is compiled from footage from the Recording the Future project – an ongoing audio-visual archive by KITLV (The Netherlands and Indonesia), Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (Jakarta) and Offstream (Jakarta). This article and …
WPS 183 Asian Urbanisms and Mallness in ‘Recording the Future’ Read More »
Couples experiencing infertility in Thailand visit a range of sacred places and shrines to seek supernatural intervention to improve their karmic status, propitiate wronged spirits or intervene in their fate. Based upon ethnographic observation and interviews with 31women and 13 men couples undergoing assisted reproductive treatment in four Thai clinics in 2007-8, this paper describes …
WPS 182 Begging for Babies: The Sacred Geography of Fertility in Thailand Read More »
Over the last decade, young Thai artists seem to have developed a variety of visual interests and methodologies through which they express their artistic inclinations. New media (digital and computer-based artwork) is used alongside traditional mediums such as leather carving, a comparatively vernacular practice. Figurative paintings are produced at the same time as technically sophisticated …
WPS 181 Twenty-First Century Thai Art Practices: Common Themes and Methodologies Read More »
The revival of critical approaches to ‘civilisation’ in anthropology has led to a new dynamism in the work of several contemporary anthropologists of China (Dean 1998; Feuchtwang 2006, 2009; Fiskesjo 2006; Haaland 2010; Harrell 1995; Wang 2005, 2009). The revival has been in a sense inspired by Marcel Mauss’s (2006) rejuvenated theory of civilisation, Mauss’s concept of civilisation entails the …
