Much use has been made of Chinese texts in re/constructing the history of Champa. However, the scholars who have done such work have generally not had access to the text translated in this paper –the account of Champa contained in the Song Hui-yao ji-gao ( 宋會 要 輯稿 ), or “Draft of the Collected Statutes …
WPS 53 Champa in the Song hui-yao: A Draft Translation Read More »
In the early 1990s, the animist and Hindu traces in adat, or Malay custom, became contentious for resurgent Islam in Malaysia. Reclaiming Adat focuses on the filmmakers, intellectuals, and writers who reclaimed adat to counter the homogenizing aspects of both Islamic discourse and globalization in this period. They practised their project of recuperation with an …
Reclaiming Adat: Contemporary Malaysian Film and Literature Read More »
This article shows how Arab geographical conceptualizations of insular Southeast Asia came to be placed under the rubric of ‘Jâwa’ in the 13th century. It does so after examining echoes of another toponym of far greater longevity in greater depth, namely Zâbaj. It outlines how this earlier term served from the mid-9th century to mark …
Asian Population Studies is the first international population journal to focus exclusively on population issues in Asia. The journal publishes original research on matters related to population in this large, complex and rapidly changing region, and welcomes substantive empirical analyses, theoretical works, applied research, and contributions to methodology. Topics covered include all branches of population studies …
In both academic scholarship and the popular imagination, the globality of modern society has been represented by global cities as the corporate and financial epicenters for capital accumulation, cosmopolitan cultures and innovative change. This has created an image of the globalized world as empty beyond cities which make it into the global league as paradigmatic …
In the mid-fourteenth century, two empires dominated Southeast Asia: Majapahit in Java, and Ayudhya in Thailand. The 14th century was an important era in Asian history. The first known overseas Chinese settlements formed during this period. Little is known of them. Archaeological research over the past 20 years has shown that Singapore experienced its first …
Studying the Hong merchant houses in Canton provides us with a unique glimpse into the inner-workings of the Canton System. Tan Suqua was one of the most well-known Hong merchants of the early-eighteenth century. His family ran the prominent and respected firm, the Guangshun Hang, which was one of the pillars of the trade for …
WPS 50 Tan Suqua and Family: Merchants of Canton 1716-1778 Read More »
Who are farang (White Westerners) in the Thai construction of knowledge? How have farang become parts of the discourses of Thainess? What are the effects of farang on Thai national and popular cultural identities? This paper focuses on the deconstruction of Thailand’s Western other through an identification marker of “farang,” arguably one of many key …
Studies of hegemonic domination, even in authoritarian states, have tended to focus on ideology and consensus, treating coercion as a straightforward matter that does not need to be problematised. This essay attempts to redress the balance, arguing that states have a range of repressive tools at their disposal, which they need to use intelligently if …
WPS 48 Calibrated coercion and the maintenance of hegemony in Singapore Read More »
