No.67 Spring 2013

Front Cover: Canopy of the tropical cloud forest in Peninsular Malaysia.
Photo Credit: Ito Masayuki

Contents
Editorial

4

Understanding Material Cycling Related
to Human Activities in Tropical Areas—Changes in Quality of Water, Air, and Soil with Land Use Change—

Itoh Masayuki

5

Kozan Osamu

8

Okamoto Masaaki

11

Grant Evans

14

Bliss Cua Lim

18

Virgina Jing-yi Shih22

Mario Lopez

26“Cotton Biomass Society”—Learning lessons from Uzbekistan—

Jakarta’s Local Politics and
Its Institutional Lack of Democracy

The Lao Inter-generational Contract

Archival Fragility: Philippine Cinema
and the Challenge of Sustainable Preservation

Exploring Southeast Asian Studies Programs
and Scholarly Treasures in Japanese Institutions:
A Preliminary Fieldwork Survey

36th Southeast Asian Seminar 2012
—Cities and Cultures in Southeast Asia—

3

Publications

28

Fellowships

29

Southeast Asian Studies

30

Visual Documentary Project Announcement

31

Editorial
In this issue, we continue to push forward in showcasing
CSEAS’ commitment to fostering multidisciplinary research
agendas that are underway on our program “Promoting theStudy of Sustainable Humanosphere in Southeast Asia.” Both Ito
Masayuki and Kozan Osamu, natural scientists working inSoutheast Asia, present their work on high biomass society inorder to draw our attention to the human effects and impactsof the manipulation of our common resources. Itoh, a bio­
geochemist, introduces the current work he is engaged in on
Sumatra­Island, Indonesia, and explains how material cycles inpeatland ecosystems can change through the conversion offorest land into oil or rubber plantation. ­Kozan Osamu, a climatologist, offers us a stark warning on how “Cotton­BiomassSociety” — the exclusive production of one commodity crop in
Uzbekistan — holds lessons for some of the changes taking
place in Southeast Asia. We hope that we can continue to
showcase some of the directions natural science researchers
are taking at CSEAS to present the different multidisciplinary
approaches that are necessary to bring out a fuller picture ofchanges taking place in the region.

The Editors
In the NewsIn line with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies’ (CSEAS)
commitment to strengthening dialogue and exchange between the r­ egion’s scholars, January 2013 saw a series of important workshops sponsored by its Large-Scale Research Program
entitled “Promoting the Study of Sustainable Humanosphere in
Southeast Asia.” On the 16 January, 2013, CSEAS hosted aninter­national workshop on ‘Disaster and the City: Historical Per­
spectives from the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan, 1945-2011’
convened by Loh Kah Seng. Seven scholars from ­Japan, thePhilippines, Indonesia, and Australia explored the sociohistorical­dimensions of natural hazards and disasters in cities
and towns in three countries located on the Pacific Rim of Fire.
Aiming to strengthen exchanges between natural scientists
and other disciplines, Kok-Boon Neoh, an expert in termites,
convened a workshop on pest management in Southeast Asia.
­Experts from within the region held a timely discussion on this
topic with participants from interdisciplinary centers such as
Research Institute of Sustainable Humanosphere (RISH), CSEAS,
Center for Integrated Area Studies (CIAS), Graduate School of
Asian and African Studies (ASAFAS), and Graduate School of
Agriculture, Kyoto University, as well as pest management personnel. Dr. Vuong Tan Nguyen (Institute of Ecology and Works
Protection, Academy for Water Resources, Hanoi, Vietnam) and
Dr. Joseph Bong Choon Fah (Universiti Putra Malaysia) shared
how Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approaches are adopted in agro-industrial plantations in Southeast Asia, while Dr. Lee
4

Chow Yang (Universiti Sains Malaysia) presented a core set ofbest practices of insect pest management during natural disasters. All presenters offered combi­nations of using updated andcomprehensive information on t­argeted insect pests and theway they interact with the environment. These raised questions
on how we can minimize the use of pesticide input to thefarmland and human dominated spaces in Southeast Asia.
CSEAS also hosted the Kyoto-Cornell Joint International
Workshop on “Transnational Southeast Asia: Paradigms, Histories and Vectors” which was held in Kyoto on 11-12 January,
2013. In sessions on Flows and Connectivities, Representations,Internal and International Relations, and Border-Crossing Minorities, papers were presented by faculty and researchers of
Kyoto University and other Japanese universities, together with
Dr. ­Tamara Loos, director of the Southeast Asia Program (SEAP)
of Cornell University, and faculty members and graduate students from Cornell University. This workshop is the first collaboration between the CSEAS and SEAP as a result of a Memorandum of Understanding that the two institutions signed in 2011and hopes to lead to more collaborative research with one ofAmerica’s top research center’s for Southeast Asian Studies.
On 17 January, 2013, the “Global Powers and Local Resourcesin Southeast Asia: Impact of International Forces on Local Society and Environment” workshop, organizers by Akiko Morishita(a researcher based at CSEAS) and invited five speakers from
Malaysia­, Korea and Japan to give presentations of case studies
on the political and social dynamics of foreign-venture businesses in Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam and discuss
how they have affected local people and the environment.
Dr. Simon Creak (Hakubi Project, Kyoto University) and Dr.
Keith Barney (lecturer, Australian National University) convened
a workshop entitled “Authoritarian State, Weak State, Environmental State? Conceptualizing Power and Authority in Laos” on
18-19 January, 2013. At a time when the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party is overseeing unprecedented economic growth
yet continues to brook little dissent, particularly in the face ofgrowing concerns over resource exploitation, this international
workshop sought to conceptualize state power and authority
in socialist and post-socialist Laos. Fourteen presenters, including ten from overseas and two from other parts of ­Japan, gave
papers on topics cutting across general themes of culture,space, and institutions. Stimulating discussion and great fun
were had by all.
CSEAS will continue to foster dialogue through international
workshops over the coming year and hope that the Center willcontinue to play a role in developing networks and strengthen
relations between partner institutions within Southeast Asiaand further beyond.

Understanding Material Cycling Related to Human Activities inTropical Areas — Changes in Quality of Water, Air, and Soil with Land Use Change —Itoh Masayuki
Assistant Professor CSEAS

C

urrently, there are many environmental problems occurring
at a global level with many directly related to human activities and their subsequent impacts on nature. In particular, rapid
environmental changes are affecting tropical areas throughrainforest deforestation, peat land degradation, and the pollution of both ground and surface water. These issues haveoccurred partly due to an increase in the human population,and its demands for timber, land and water resources.
In order to make sense of the scale of environmental changes and problems taking place at a global scale, it is essential toknow how the changes in environmental conditions in tropicalareas function at a macro and micro scale of material cycling1(Figure 1). Despite uncertainties in knowing the real amount ofbiomass that exists in different regions of the world, tropicalforests have been found to account for up to 35% of global
gross primary production (Melillo et al., 1993; Dixon et al., 1994).
Thus, the uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by plant
photosynthesis- with its high productivity - accounts for about
57% of global plant biomass. As such, we shouldn’t underestimate the great impact tropical rainforests, including peat land
forests, have on the global climate in the sense that they regulate the flow of many kinds of important elements such as­carbon and nitrogen. Here, peat land forests are tropical moist
forests where waterlogged soils prevent the decomposition ofdead wood and leaves. Over the years, this creates a thick layerof acidic peat. According to one recent report, tropical peat
land area is 441,025km2 (~11% of global peat land area) ofwhich 247,778km2 (56%) is in Southeast Asia (Page et al., 2011).
They revealed a large peat land carbon pool in Southeast Asiaof 68.5 Gt (giga tonnes) equal to 77% of the whole tropicalpeat carbon pool. This is 11–14% of the total global peat­carbon pool. In particular, Indonesia has the largest share oftropical peat carbon (57.4 Gt, 65%). As such, peat land forests inSoutheast Asia are considered to be one of the most importantparts of larger ecosystems due to the huge amount of carbon
stock and biodiversity they contain. Yet, recent rapid and intensive deforestation to procure timber and land for commercial
plants or crops (Oil palm or rubber plantations) with social andeconomic pressure (Koh et al., 2009) have induced fundamental
changes in the material cycling. In regards to these changes,
our knowledge of both natural and human-impacted­environments in tropical areas is still very limited due to access difficulties and the inability to continuously monitor them. In this­essay, I report on the field research that my present researchgroup has conducted and the different environmental conditions we encounter.
Our group is presently conducting research on Sumatra Island, Indonesia where we focus on changes in material cyclingin the peatland ecosystem. Our research area includes bothnatural and degraded (after changing land use) sites. Most

parts of natural peatland forest have been converted into oilpalm or rubber plantations through their felling and forest fires.
In our present field site, natural forest is also preserved in forest
reserve areas, and this has permitted us to simultaneously­
observe both natural and human-impacted environmental­
conditions and compare the sequential changes in material­cycling in tandem with environmental change.
To correctly understand material cycling in peatland f­orests,
especially in carbon and nitrogen cycling, many kinds of simultaneous observations need to be carried out. If it is the carbon
cycle2, we conduct 1) soil sampling to understand the carbon
storage in soil, 2) ground and river water sampling, rainfall
monitoring and water table monitoring to understand changes
in water quality and quantity which determine the amount ofcarbon flow in water, 3) the measurement of CO2 and methane3(CH4) emission rates from soil surface to the ­atmosphere, andalso 4) wood or soil decomposers4 (such as termites and ants)
activities to know how much carbon flows in the whole ecosystem. At the same time, we also have to measure nutrients in
soil, water, and woods to understand nitrogen cycling5 andother elements. This is because nutrient conditions also affectcarbon cycling through controlling microbial metabolic activities. Sometimes, specific tools for measurement are necessary
such as isotope analysis which gives us information on the history or degree of biogeochemical reactions. The collection ofthese data allows us to consider when, how, and what reactions occur in the observation site. Ultimately, this permits us
to understand some parts of the whole ecosystem.

Fig. 1: Simple diagram of carbon and nitrogen cycling among the soil, vegetation, and atmosphere. This illustrates how these nutrients are cycled within thesystem. Source: Beldin, S.I., and Perakis (2009)5

Fig. 2: Results of chemical components in sampled water in the peatland sitein Sumatra, Indonesia. Arrows indicate the water flow direction. Same data ofJapanese mountainous river site is also shown for comparison.

charged from degraded peat land areas through manmade­canals. The concentration of dissolved organic matter in canalwater (77 mg C/L (carbon per liter) and 2.5 mg N/L (nitrogen
per liter) is much higher than that of groundwater in this area
(31 mg C/L and 1.9 mg N/L). This implies that an increase of­discharge water stored below ground through the creation of
artificial canals can enhance the carbon and nitrogen discharge
in downstream areas. Now, we have set up our field survey
equipment (a number of wells for water table level measurement and for water collection) in degraded peat sites and oilpalm plantation sites (Picture 1a and 1b) and will make a newobservation plot in natural forest sites to observe the differencein material cycling among the sites. Continuous monitoring willallow us to understand the mechanisms.
Although a large number of scientific papers have been
published on material cycling in tropical areas, most of them
restrict their focus to the natural phenomenon of their observed dataset. However, we frequently encounter data whichcannot be explained only through natural phenomenon.
­Nowadays, there are few places free from the effects of humanimpacts, and, especially in fields that are located close to residential areas, there are many kinds of impacts that change local
environments. For example, people fell trees, create ditches for

Our present research group consists of researchers fromv­ arious backgrounds: hydrology, biogeochemistry, biology, andecology. Our research targets also include various components
and not only the analysis of one of their elements. As such, wedeal with soil, water, air, tree, and insects: all important featuresof the ecosystems. And at a larger macro scale, we also must
deal with microclimate information and geological information(see Kozan Osamu’s article in this issue of the CSEAS newsletter). The important thing that must be kept in mind, is that all
the elements and their functions relate to each other in a highly
complex fashion. Land use change leads to changes in thechemical and physical properties of soil. When this occurs, gas(carbon and nitrogen emissions from soil to atmosphere), water
movement, and water quality below the ground can be significantly affected. Insects such as termites, also play an importantrole in both carbon and nutrient cycling as wood or soil decomposers (see Kok-Boon 2012, 17-18). What this suggests to
us is the necessity for careful observation of the whole ecosystem across its many interacting levels. Of course this is no easy
feat, but our group is trying to do this through the multidisciplinary researcher base that exists at the Center for Southeast
Asian Studies and the other institutions. We always welcome
new researchers who are specialists of other disciplines to help
us enrich our approach to our own field of research.
Even though our research in Sumatra peat land is just beginning, we have started to observe some changes in chemicalparameters in rain water, peat land ground water, and river­water discharged from this peat land area as part of our preliminary study (Figure 2). In Figure 2, we also show the results ofriver water from non peat land forest sites in Japanese mountain sites for comparison. The increase in electric conductivity
and dissolved organic matter along the flow direction indicatesthat much dissolved inorganic and organic matters is dis-

Pict. 1: Peatland after cutting down the forest and fires (a). Oil palms (b) or
rubbers will be planted.

6

No.67 Spring 2013

References
Beldin, S.I., and Perakis, S.S. 2009. Unearthing the secrets of theforest: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2009-3078, p. 4.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3078/pdf/fs20093078.pdf(accessed 12 Feb, 2013)
Dixon R.K. 1994. Carbon pools and flux of global forest ecosystems, Science 263: 185-190.
Koh, P.K, Butler RA, Bradshaw C.J.A. 2009. Conversion of Indonesia’s peatlands. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7 (5):238–38.
Kok-Boon, Neoh. 2012. Termites’ Merciless Acts of Respect­toward their Sick and Dead Nestmates. CSEAS Newsletter
66: 17–18.
Mellillo, J. M. 1993. Global climate change and terrestrial net
primary productivity, Nature 43: 234-240.
Pict. 2: Teaching a local student methods to prepare a river water sample.

lowering water, and sometimes start fires on peatlands. These
impacts can heavily affect observable values and must be­included in any analysis of datasets and discussions.
Our Center offers us a great advantage to consider humanimpacts as there are many social scientists based here who
provide natural scientists useful and relevant information on­local people’s thinking, activities, and their living conditions.
This information can usefully explain the unexplainable parts of
our observation data. At the same time, we, as natural scientists,
hope our scientific data can be useful information for social­researchers and contribute to how they can potentially understand local communities and the environments they exist within. Numerical (either in terms of quality or quantity) data madeup of many observational components from the natural environment can be strong tools to strengthen social scientists­discussions and allow them to provide clearer statistical evidence. Doing so will allow for a synergy to take place acrossdisciplines working in the same field.
In concluding on our research, and thinking in terms of international research exchange, I realize the importance for exchanging the research techniques and knowledge between­local researchers in Southeast Asian countries. Such exchanges
permit us to discover new evidence in the field, greatly in partdue to their intimate knowledge of the field, and its naturalcharacter. Although my research in peatland forest is only justbeginning, I hope our research project will be a collaborative
one with many local researchers and produce new findings in
the near future.

Page, S.E., Rieley, J.O., and Banks, C.J. 2011. Global and regional
importance of the tropical peatland carbon pool. Global
Change Biology 17: 798–818.

Notes
1

Material cycling refers to the transfer of organic and inorganic
compounds. Natural ecosystems are basically constituted
by producers (plants which produce organic matter), consumers (which utilize organic matter for energy), and decomposers (which convert the organic matter to inorganic
matter). Materials in the environment are used repeatedly
by these living organisms. This is known as material cycling.

2

The biogeochemical cycle (material cycling with biological or
geological or chemical or some of them) by which carbon
is exchanged between the different spheres of the Earth.

3

The second most significant greenhouse gas next to carbon
dioxide. CH4 is also produced and consumed biologicallyby soil microorganisms.

4

Organisms that absorb nutrients by utilizing organic mattersand then convert them into inorganic forms.

5

The most abundant gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. In the cycle, nitrogen is converted by soil bacteria to compounds
which can be assimilated by plants. This incorporated nitrogen is then taken in by other organisms, subsequently
released, acted on by bacteria, and made available again to
the nonliving environment.

7

“Cotton Biomass Society” — Learning Lessons from Uzbekistan —Kozan Osamu
Associate Professor CSEAS

Climate and Vegetation
It goes without saying that the climate exerts dominantc­ ontrol over the spatial distribution of major vegetation types
on a global scale. In turn, vegetation cover affects climate via
the alteration of the physical characteristics of the land surface
through the albedo1, roughness2, and the amount of biomass
present. Some simulation models reveal multiple steady states3
in many regions due to a strong interaction between the vegetation4 and hydrological cycle5. My own background is in hydrology and civil engineering and at present, I am working on
the ­sustainability of large scale tree plantations in the peatswamp forests of Indonesia. In my previous work, I developed ahydrological circulation model of the Huaihe River basin in­China, the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia, as well as working
on peat swamp forests in Indonesia (Kozan et al. 2003, Kitamura
et al. 2007). What my continuous research has clarified is thatan ­estimation of the impact of the land surface on heat andthe hydrological cycle is important for both water resources­management and climate change analysis. In this short essay,
I focus on what forms of biomass society exist in Uzbekistan.
I draw upon the methodologies that I have developed withinsustainable humanosphere studies I have conducted in Southeast Asia and East Asia. What I aim to show in this essay is what
mistakes were made in Uzbekistan and the lessons that can belearnt from this in the development of biomass resources forhuman survival and sustainability in tropical Southeast Asia.
Biomass is usually defined as the biological material madeup of living or recently living organisms, most often referring toplants or plant-derived materials. Over mankind’s history, we
have continuously appropriated biomass resources from local
vegetation, rice, being a prime example in Southeast Asia. Rice,requires intensive irrigation and in previous studies I conductedin the Huaihe river basin, it was clear that since the 1950s, many
water facilities like irrigation channels and water reservoirs wereconstructed specifically for rice and crop cultivation. As such,land and water use related to rice and other crop cultivation

Fig. 1: Basins of the Syr Darya River (based on the NASA World Wind (2005)
8

promoted the local and regional hydrological cycle during
cropping seasons in the Huaihe river basin. The hydrologicalconditions, including water facilities, maintained multiple steadystates in the area over a prolonged period of time. However, insome cases, human activities led to irreversible e­ nvironmental
destruction and hydrological change. I focus on Uzbekistan tofurther discuss the impact of human activities in relation to
monoculture biomass society.

“Cotton Biomass Society” and the Shrinking Aral Seas
Uzbekistan, formerly part of the former Soviet Union, is thelargest Central Asian cotton producing republic in the region.
Under Soviet rule, cotton was intensively produced and this inevitably led to the depletion of the Aral Sea, and exacerbatedsalinity problems. Intensive commodity based production created a region almost totally dependent on a single agriculturalcommodity, despite riches in terms of petroleum, natural gas
and precious metals.
Two major rivers – the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya – originally flowed into the Aral Sea, once an inland lake that was theworld’s fourth largest in water area. In the 1960s, the Soviet
Union started large-scale irrigation projects in the vast dry
steppes extending through the mid and downstream basins ofthese two rivers. Irrigated land grew from about 4.5 million
hectares (ha) in 1960 to about 7 million ha in 1980. During
these two decades, the population roughly doubled from 14
million to 27 million, as did the amount of water taken from therivers, from 64.7 km3 to 120 km3 – over 90% of which was used
for irrigation. By 1999, irrigated farmland occupied 7.90 million
ha and water taken from the rivers ranged from 110 to 117 km3.
The main crops promoted for consumption were water-hungry– cotton, rice, wheat, maize, and grass. As a result of the rise in
consumption, a huge increase in water diverted to irrigated ­areas
dramatically decreased water flowing into the Aral Sea, disturbing the balance between water inflow and evaporation fromthe lake. Sadly, this drastically reduced the lake area and rapidly
raised the saline concentration from 10% to 35%. The Aral Sea
became divided into two parts: the Small Aral in the north andthe Large Aral in the south, both of which continue to shrink
It was during the Soviet Era under the Soviet Union’s“planned economy” policy, that many dams and other irrigation facilities were constructed in the Syr Darya basin, due tothe Communist Party’s prioritization of cotton cultivation in
downstream Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. That was because
most of the socialist countries were located at a high latitude
and only Uzbekistan possessed the high potential to cultivate
cotton biomass for clothing. Many water facilities, including thehuge multi-purpose Toktogul Dam, were built in Kyrgyzstan,­located furthest upstream in the basin and rich in water re-No.67 Spring 2013sources. This put several thousand hectares of fertile land andmany rural communities and historically important sites underwater. These water facilities were used to supply the two­downstream nations with irrigation water rather than to produce electricity. About 75% of the annual discharge releasedfor ­irrigation downstream in the summer months of April to
September (Abbink et al, 2005). The Soviet government“compensated” Kyrgyzstan for its lost water and efforts exerted
to operate and manage irrigation facilities by supplying coal,­petroleum, gas, and other energy resources abundant in thetwo downstream republics to Kyrgyzstan in addition to pre­ferential budgetary measures. However, large-scale irrigatedagricultural production promoted in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstancaused secondary environmental problems. This included thecontinual shrinking of the Aral Sea. However, the Soviet government avoided competition for water use among the republics
in the basin by redistributing resources throughout the Soviet
Union under Communist Party control. Thus, cotton biomass
production became the top priority in this area during the Cold
War period.

Climate Change Induced by “Cotton Biomass Society”
In addition to the impacts of water management changes
on water circumstances in the basins, human activities alsochanged the regional climate. Meteorological data6 shows that
the Aral Sea basin experienced strong temperature warming
over the last 30 years, melting snow earlier in spring and­causing water shortages in summer. Some local researchers­reported extensive land cover changes caused by both humanimpact and temperature warming.7
For example, data provided by the Carbon Dioxide Information
Analysis Center (CDIAC) and other local researchers8 showedthat air temperature warming averages over a 100 year period
were 0.9-1.0 degrees yet 0.4-0.5 degree for 25 years in Uzbekistan.
These values are relatively higher than global averages, e.g.,
those reported by the Third Intergovernmental Panel on­Climate Change (IPCC) who presented 0.6 degree for 100 years(1900-2000). Precipitation data from 25 stations in the area
showed a positive trend in precipitation and 24 showed positive (increasing) trends in air temperature. No marked trends
were seen for precipitation, but only one station indicated­negative trends.

Pict. 1: Cotton is picked by hand mainly by women, and including child labor.

to cotton, from over two million hectares in the late eighties
to around 1.43 million in 2008/2009.
In 1992, Uzbekistan and other independent Central Asian­republics concluded the Almaty Agreement emphasizing downstream irrigation and environmental issues, all disadvantageous
to upstream water distribution. Essentially, the agreement
maintained the irrigation policies implemented under the­Soviet era’s planned economy, but disregarded upstream economic development using water resources. The two downstream republics used water from Kyrgyzstan for free irrigationand started selling energy resources to be supplied to Kyrgyzstan
on the world market. This left Kyrgyzstan with the maintenancecosts of its cascaded dams while being charged international
prices for gas, coal, and petroleum exported from downstream.
In the summer of 1993, Kyrgyzstan decided to use the Toktogul
Dam, - the largest in the basins, with a reservoir capacity of 19.5
billion m3 and an active storage capacity of 14.5 billion m3 -, forpower generation in winter. Kyrgyzstan reduced summer water
release to 45% of the annual discharge and increased winter­release to 55% in October to March during the 1990s. This triggered a shortage of irrigation water in nations downstream in
the summer while its discharge of water for power generationin winter caused floods in the river’s lower reaches. Because
the lower reaches of the Syr Darya froze in winter, its capacity

Post-Soviet Biomass Society
After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan gainedi­ndependence in 1991. Cotton was formerly absorbed largelyby the industries of Soviet and COMECON countries and distribution was predominantly controlled by Moscow. On independence, as the old regime crumbled, the country had to suddenly find new markets. Industrial output in the former empire
collapsed, and the new government had to establish itself inworld economic affairs. Furthermore, there was a move to
wean the nation off the monoculture of the Soviet period andachieve self-sufficiency in grains. This, together with water­constraints, has resulted in a declining trend in areas devoted

Pict. 2: Leaching from irrigated Farm lands leads to the accumulation of salt onneighboring agricultural sites.
9

declined, increasing the damage. The Chardara Dam in­K azakhstan, with a reservoir capacity of 5.7 billion m3, and an
active storage capacity of 4.4 billion m3, cannot control floods
alone and Kazakhstan must let an excess of 3.0 billion m3 in­water overflow each winter into the Arnasai Depression in­Uzbekistan, next to the dam, and eventually discharge it into
saline Lake Aidar. Lake Aidar has grown into the “second” Aral.
Water flowing into the depression does not reach the Small Aral,
it mixes with salt water and loses its value as a water resource.

“Plantation Biomass Society” in South East Asia

water and heat budget in the Huaihe River Basin China —detail representation of various cropland and irrigation—,
Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Hydrology
and Water Resources in Asia Pacific Region, pp.763-768.
NASA. 2005. NASA World Wind, 1.3.1.
Razuvaev V. N., Apasova E. B., and Martuganov R. A. 1998. Sixand three-hourly meteorological observations from 233
U.S.S.R. stations, ORNL/CDIAC-108, NDP-048. Carbon Dioxide
Information Analysis Center.

This essay has primarily presented results from research donein Central Asia but, its lessons have value when we consider
the fast-paced changes that are occurring in Southeast Asia.
Fast-economic growth and the need to capture, extract, and­allocate energy resources from biomass, are radically trans­
forming the region and restructuring some nations where
damming and intense commodity cropping is taking place.
Southeast Asian nations possess a vast resource of biomass
which has historically supported many civilizations and culturesin the region. The tropics in Southeast Asia have one of theworld’s highest potentialities to reproduce biomass due to far
greater solar radiation and active heat and water cycles thanother regions. The region has also been, and will continue tobecome, the most fertile ground for bio-resource commodification in human history. With the changing status of biomass
as forest and agricultural products, bio-materials, and financial
instruments (related to carbon sinks, REDD initiatives and soforth) the tropical zone will continue to undergone a fast-paced
metamorphosis through the development of an intensive
and technological agro-industrial production system, including
large-scale plantations of oil palm, Acacia mangium, teak, coffee, tea, sugarcane, and cassava, to name but a few. Large areasof primary and secondary forest are being replaced by them.
Uzbekistan shows us the folly of large-scale environmental­manipulation, allocation, and extraction of resources and how,over the short-term, human intervention can create very realchanges to local climates. We require further comparative­studies from other parts of the world so that we can further our
understandings and responses to future changes in the region.
Comparing to what is taking place in other regions can help us
formulate responses to the rapid changes that are taking placein Southeast Asia.

Spektorman T. Y. 2002. Methodology of climate change scenarios
for Uzbekistan using ideal forecast concept, Bulletin 5.
Tashkent, SANIGMI.

References
Abbink K., Moller L. C., and O’Hara S. 2005. The Syr Darya riverconflict: an experimental case study.
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cdx/dpaper/2005-14.html(accessed 20 December, 2012)
Kitamura Y., Kozan O., Sunada K., and Oishi S. 2007. Water­Problems in Central Asia. Journal of Disaster Research. Vol.2,
No 3: 134-142.
Kozan, O., Tanaka, K. and Ikebuchi, S. 2003. The estimation of
10

Toderich, K., Black, C. C., Juylova, E., Kozan, O. Mukimov, T. andMatsuo, N. 2007. C3/C4 plants in the vegetation of Central
Asia, geographical distribution and environmental adaptationin relation to climate. In Rattan Lal et al., Climate Change andTerrestrial Carbon Sequestration in Central Asia. London:
Taylor & Francis, pp. 33-64.

Notes
1

Albedo is the fraction of incident radiation reflected by a­surface or body, commonly expressed as percentage.

2

Surface roughness, often shortened to roughness, is a­measure of the texture of a surface. It is quantified by thevertical deviations of a real surface from its ideal form.

3

The concept of multiple steady states is a key theory for understanding the dynamic nature system. Nature’s systems
possess the possibility to have different steady states.

4

Vegetation is a very general term for plant life; it refers to theground cover provided by plants.

5This cycle is the continuous physical process of evaporation,
precipitation, infiltration, runoff and subsurface flow of water.

6

See Razuvaev V. N., Apasova E. B., and Martuganov R. A. 1998.

7

See Toderich, K., Black, C. C., Juylova, E., Kozan, O. Mukimov, T.
and Matsuo, N. 2007.

8

See Spektorman T. Y. 2002.

Jakarta’s Local Politics and Its Institutional Lack of Democracy
Okamoto Masaaki
Associate Professor CSEAS

Jakarta’s Local Politics?
Urbanization is undergoing rapid progress in Southeast Asia.
More than 42% of the total population in the region now residein urban areas. Yet, the national capital still acts as the center ofgravity for all aspects of life in every nation-state of Southeast
Asia, with the possible exception of Myanmar. The Indonesian
capital city of Jakarta is one such typical case. Jakarta has morethan ten million people and still controls 60% of Indonesia’s­total money circulation. Since the Dutch colonial period, it has
been the center of economy, politics, media and culture in­Indonesia. Therefore, it is natural that many works on Indonesia
actually deal with some aspects of the capital.
Jakarta has a wide range of political infrastructures such as
the presidential office, government ministries, a national assembly and political party headquarters. In this sense, there aremany academic studies on politics in Jakarta, but these deal
with the “national” politics of the city. Jakarta has its governor,
local bureaucracy and local MPs and elections to choose them,
but local politics per se, is, from my point of view, rarely well­researched. There seems to be several reasons for this lack ofacademic interest. Firstly, it is said that a local politics, independent of national politics, doesn’t exist in Jakarta. The boundary
between national and Jakartan politics is blurred and both are
regarded as being too closely related. This creates difficulties inseparating out local politics.
Secondly, Jakarta’s politics is too unique to compare withother local politics in Indonesia. Since the democratization anddecentralization process started, local politics has drawn theacademic interest of Indonesianists, and research on politics at
a local level has boomed (for example, see Aspinall and Fealy
eds. 2003; Erb and Priyambudi eds. 2009; Nordholt and van­Klinken 2009; Hadiz 2010). But, Jakarta’s politics has never become a part of this for Jakarta is the national capital of Indonesia
and local politics, such as the gubernatorial election, has been
considered to be an anomaly within the nation’s local politics.
Thirdly, the politics of Jakarta is openly visible to everyone.
On a daily basis, all the major national media scrutinize andcover the activities of Jakarta’s governor, vice governor andprovincial parliament. The daily exposure to them might givethe impression that everyone knows how politics functions in
Jakarta, thus the topic need not merit a long article or a book.
Scholars in Indonesia are satisfied with nothing more than­writing short essays on Jakartan politics in newspapers andweekly journals for daily consumption. Yet, they tend to neglect
the less democratic character of institutions in Jakarta. In thisshort essay, I intend to look at what kind of local politics are atwork at the heart of the nation and analyze the reason why
Jakarta’s politics is, from an institutional point of view, so­changeable.

Charting the Phenomenal Rise of Jokowi and Ahok
in 2012The emergence of Jakarta’s new governor and vice governor
in 2012, Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and Basuki Pernama (Ahok) is
phenomenal and this has finally led to a subsequent rise in academic interest in Jakarta’s local politics. Most of the polling­results by influential survey institutes and companies before
the 2012 gubernatorial election didn’t expect them to win with
their predictions centered upon the incumbent and well-­entrenched governor, Fauzi Bowo. They were wrong.
Jokowi and Ahok are known for their reformist orientation.
Jokowi was a mayor of Solo city in Java, and was well known forhis successful governance and participatory approach to thepeople. Ahok was the district head of East Belitung district in
Sumatera, and he was the first Chinese district head in Indonesia.
As noted elsewhere, he harshly criticized the local bureaucracyof his small district and introduced innovative policies (Okamoto2009).

Fig. 1: A populist image of Jokowi from a book written about him.
11

They were successful at the level of rural areas and only a few
in Jakarta expected that Jokowi and Ahok would pair up andrun for the gubernatorial election in metropolitan Jakarta. Six
months before the election, however, the two opposition
parties, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Partai­Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, PDIP) and the Greater Indo­nesia Movement (Gerakan Indonesia Raya, Gerindra) decided tochoose them as potential governor and vice governor candidates to defeat the incumbent Fauzi Bowo of the president’s
party, Democrat Party (Partai Demokrat).
Fauzi Bowo and his vice gubernatorial candidate are indigenous Jakartans called Betawi and aimed to draw upon support
from this group. The incumbernt Fauzi Bowo was also able tomobilize the local bureaucracy. On the other hand, Jokowi and
Ahok were outsiders with no political base in Jakarta. Yet, thisnewness proved to be beneficial to them. The economy in­Jakarta was good under Fauzi Bowo, but he was less communicative with the people. The chronic seriousness of problems
such as floods, traffic jams and sharp inequality still remained
the same or became worse during his rule. His own behavior,and the unsolved problems, degraded his popularity.
As such, Jokowi and Ahok successfully offered some hopefor change with their communicative skills and their achievements as local leaders. They took a populist approach by criticizing the local bureaucracy and the elite-oriented economic
development scheme and quite frequently went down tocommunicate with and listen to poor communities. The populist image and reputation they engendered greatly contributed
to their win in the election. This showed that Jakartans soughtsome change in local government.

Change: A Normal Political Pattern in Jakarta?
If we look back over the trajectory of Jakarta’s politics, Jokowi
and Ahok’s success is phenomenal but understandable. Actually, a political change (of actors) is not a rarity and is a frequent­phenomenon in the city. In the first general election in 1999
­after the fall of authoritarian Suharto regime, PDIP, a nationalist
party led by a staunch anti-Suharto leader of Megawati­Sukarnoputri, became the largest with 33.7% at the national
level. The voters in Jakarta enthusiastically supported PDIP witha slightly larger vote of 39.3%.
A similar kind of support for change occurred during the2004 election and the 2007 gubernatorial election in Jakarta.
The prominent new political trend in the mid-2000s in Indonesia
was the rise of the Islamist party, the Prosperous Justice Party(Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, PKS). PKS successfully established its
image as a clean anti-corruption party espousing Islamic ethics
and morals. Jakarta became a showcase for these trends. PKS
rapidly increased its voting percentage from 1.4% in 1999 to
7.3% in 2004 at the national level and it became the largest
party in Jakarta with 23% of the total votes. In 2007, the candidate solely supported by PKS lost the gubernatorial election,
but fared better than expected against the then vice-governor
Fauzi Bowo who was supported by 20 parties.
The winning party in Jakarta changed again in the 2009
­election. The Partai Demokrat led by the popular president­Yudhoyono successfully presented itself as a centrist and catchall party and obtained the largest number of votes with 20.4%
across the nation. Partai Demokrat was far more popular in­Jakarta with 34.0% of the total votes.

Change: A Rational Choice for Jakartans?
It is quiet easy to find essays in newspapers and journals that
attempt to explain the reasons behind this trend for constantchange. The most often-cited reason is the rational choice of
Jakarta’s voters. The majority of voters in Jakarta are highly educated middle- and upper-class people, and rationally choose
the parties and candidates based on their programs and trackrecords. Yet essays say that the Jakartan voters consider the­incumbent leaders and old parties as having no significant
achievements and therefore, they always choose new ones.
Jakarta is also home to the indigenous Betawi, but they­occupy just 28% of the total population in Jakarta. Jakartans are
ethnically and religiously heterogeneous. Primordial social
cleavages are important and often decisive factors in ­politicalcontestation in other parts of Indonesia, but it is not true with
Jakarta. Jakarta’s elections are said to be an anomaly within Indonesia. The rational Jakartans, as a voting body, are said to bea decisive factor for constant political change in ­Jakarta as rational choice theory1 seems to suggest. I think it is not enoughto explain Jakartan local politics. Jakarta has an undemocratic
institutional framework that creates and aggrandizes the metropolitan “floating mass” who are eager for constant and instantpolitical change. This metropolitan floating mass has no strong
political networks and no staunch ideological background andtends to give the votes to a party or a candidate that is able tosincerely or shrewdly present itself or himself/herself as anagent for change. This mass is large enough to be a decisive
factor in any of Jakarta’s elections.

Metropolitan Floating Mass

Pict. 1: Dewan Kota: the structure and members exist, but function less
12

The existence of the metropolitan floating mass is not limited to Jakarta and we can find similar masses in other developed or developing major cities. The uniqueness of Jakarta isthat the institutional framework is less democratic and that

No.67 Spring 2013

­facilitates the emergence of a metropolitan floating mass.
As the national capital, Jakarta is a special autonomous region. The first law regulating Jakarta in the era of democracy
was law no.34/1999 and it was revised in 2007 as law no.
29/2007. The major difference between Jakarta and other partsof Indonesia is the number of tiers of autonomous regions. Jakarta has just one tier of autonomous region at the provincial
level while other parts of Indonesia have two tiers at the provincial and district/city levels.
Jakarta has five cities and one district, but they are notautonomous regions. The provincial governor appoints the­mayors and district head. Five cities and one district have­assemblies, but they are just consultative bodies to mayors
and district heads. The bodies are called Dewan Kota for cities
and Dewan Kabupaten for districts. Each Dewan Kota has six toten members and Dewan Kabupaten has just two memberswith each member representing a sub-district. The members
are chosen from below, but not through direct election by theconstituencies, but through indirect election. The final say
about the members of Dewan Kota/Kabupaten are at the provincial parliament. Most Jakartans know nothing about the selection process of members and their activities. I interviewed
some members and found out that they were quite disappointed with Dewan because the role is not clear and the mayor or district head doesn’t pay much attention to Dewan’s opinions. They themselves don’t know much as to what they should
do as members.
As far as the Jakarta government is concerned, around seven­million voters have the right to vote for the governor and vice
governor and 90 provincial MPs. Just 92 politicians are accountable to almost 10 million people in Jakarta. The political parties
and politicians are institutionally motivated to be less communicative with Jakartans on a daily basis. Jakartan electoral politics is institutionally quite far and aloof from the everyday livesof Jakartans. We could say that they are institutionally motivated to be a metropolitan floating mass.

Reasons Behind Less Democratic Characters
The minutes of the National Parliament (DPR) concerning
law no.34/1999 on the special autonomous region of Jakarta
can tell us why the Jakarta government is kept undemocraticeven in the era of democracy (Djohermansyah et al. 1999 andinterview with Djohermansyah on 13 January 2013). First ofall, it is said that Jakarta needs integrated development as a­national capital. If cities and district are given the right to electtheir own heads and local MPs, and also the wider authority forvarious administrative jobs, the Ministry of Home Affairs is afraidof failing to achieve coordination and cooperation among ­cities
and district and the integrated development of Jakarta. Secondly, Jakarta should be socio-politically stable. The Ministry ofHome Affairs assumed that the introduction of elections at thecity and district levels might activate local politics and destabilize Jakarta. DPR agreed with the idea of the Ministry andpassed law no.34/1999. The passing of the law is understandable because it was just a year after the Jakarta ­riots in 1998.
But, the revised law in 2007 still followed the same logic anddidn’t give wider authority to the cities and ­districts. Jakarta has
no election for the mayors, district heads, and local MPs until
now.

Conclusion
100 days have passed since Jokowi and Ahok took the office.
Some have already started to grumble over the performance of
their government. It is highly probable that the metropolitan
floating mass will look to different actors for change in the next
gubernatorial election if Jokowi and Ahok fail to keep theirpower and popularity by concretely implementing their programs, showing continuous achievements to Jakartans, andshrewdly managing the fragile hopes and expectations of themass.
It is also highly probable that the metropolitan floating
mass will again be the decisive factor for the next election.
This mass is powerful in Jakarta. But Jakartans don’t recognizethat the strength of the floating mass partly depends on theundemocratic institutions in place in Jakarta. It’s a bit ironic, butnonetheless real.

References
Aspinall, Edward and Fealy, Greg, eds. 2003. Local Power and­Politics in Indonesia: Decentralization and Democratisation.
­Singapore: ISEAS.
Djohermansyah Djohan, Andi Ramses, M, and Tursandi Alwi.
1999. Sejarah dan Risalah Undang-Undang Pemerintahan
Propinsi Daerah Khusus Ibukota Negara Republik Indonesia
Jakarta: Undang-Undang Nomor 34 Tahun 1999. Jakarta:­Institut Ilmu Pemerintahan Press.
Erb, Maribeth and Priyambudi Sulistiyanto eds. 2009. Deepening
Democracy in Indonesia? Direct Elections for Local Leaders(Pilkada). Singapore: ISEAS.
Hadiz, Vedi R. 2010. Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: A Southeast Asia Perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Nordholt, Henk Schultet and van Klinken, Gerry. 2009. Renego­tiating Boundaries: Local Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia.
Leiden: KITLV Press.
Okamoto Masaaki. 2009. Populism under Decentralization in
post-Suharto Indonesia. In Populism in Asia, edited by Mizuno
Kosuke and Pasuk Pongpaichit, pp. 144-64. Singapore:­National University of Singapore Press.

Note
1

Rational choice theory as a research method concentrates
on, and analyzes how actors choose between alternative
options.

13

The Lao Inter-generational Contract
Grant Evans
Former Visiting Research Fellow CSEAS

S

ince the 1990s, social and cultural change in Laos has accelerated. Almost everyone in Laos says that they want
‘development,’ but are confused when development brings
with it unanticipated changes. These changes are most apparent among young people, and this is because they grow up in
conditions that are increasingly different from their parents. It
causes gaps in understanding between the younger generation and the older generation.
This essay focuses on what was learnt about perceptions ofgenerational change in families, from a research project that
had a larger brief, including issues of dress, sexuality, mass media, and migration. 1 We interviewed hundreds of people, bothyoung and old in the main cities of Pakse, Vientiane and Luang
Phrabang. We chose these major urban centres because wesurmised that social and cultural changes in the Lao population
were likely to be greatest in these urban centres. The Lao population in 2010 was estimated at 6.5 million, which as approximately half a million more than at the last census in March,
2005. In the Capital Vientiane, in 2010, it was estimated at over
768,000, Pakse’s population should be approaching 90,000+ in
2012, while Luang Prabang’s in 2012 should also be around90,000+. Urbanisation in all of these cities has been rapid andon-going.

Khwan Chai (Idol) calls itself the ‘magazine of the new generation.’
14

The Family Generational Contract Re-negotiated
The term generation applies most strictly within families,
marking the natural gap between parents and children. In families in the past, the differences in age between siblings was
unproblematic­in that their future was already mapped out forthem, in the sense proposed by Margaret Mead for traditionalsocieties. She argued that generational differences formed partof a well-known social pattern that was embedded in kinshiprelations. In such societies, older people appeared to know all
the cultural information that was necessary for a person to bea successful member of that society (Mead 1970,1). Adults arerespected because they have acquired socially valued knowledge and younger people continually defer to their wisdom.2
The young simply had to wait as the escalator of age carriedthem into roles already prepared for them by society. Howeverin contemporary Laos, individuals from families in rural areas­
have seen significant differences in the levels of education between older and younger siblings. The latter are more likely toengage in temporary or permanent migration for education
and/or work. This produces important experiential differences
between them, with older siblings being more traditional andcloser to their parents in attitude than the younger ones.
Larger families are still found, mostly in the countryside in
Laos. The average household size in Laos, according to the­Bureau of Statistics, is 5.9 persons, but in cities like Vientiane it islower at 5.5. In some ethnic groups, such as among Hmong,several wives are tolerated officially and large families arefound. But overall, this is a rare family form in Laos today, andfamilies of 10 or more people make up 4% of the total, according to the 2005 census. Households, of course, may be madeup of wider kin, or indeed, non-kin. In cities such as Vientiane,
Pakse and Luang Prabang which absorb large numbers of migrants, household size is in fact inflated by their incorporation.
Actual families in Lao cities tend to be smaller than in the
countryside, and they will get smaller. The main reason for thisis economic. Firstly, in cities there are fewer opportunities forchildren to become economically active and contribute to thefamily’s income. Secondly, they stay at school longer and therefore remain dependant on family support longer than ruralchildren. In general, higher education is the main avenue of
upward ­mobility for people and hence families begin to­allocate resources to higher education for their children. The
expense associated with this is a main motivation for smallerfamilies. Furthermore, education for girls is strongly correlatedwith greater individual control of fertility, and so the feedback
effect of education also favours smaller families.
Most Lao live in nuclear family households, i.e. those simply
containing parents and their children. Among lowland Lao, thecare of the aged has usually fallen to the youngest daughter,

No.67 Spring 2013

though this is less so in cities, and here we see the major­sub-form of the Lao family which is a stem family, i.e. one where
the parents (usually the wife’s side) live together with a marrieddaughter (or more rarely, son). Joint families or extended­families, i.e. ones where brothers or sisters and their wives orhusbands share a household, are uncommon. Among ethnic
groups who are patri-local, such as Hmong or Khmu, one mayfind extended families of brothers and their parents, but more
often we find stem families where the older brother cares forhis parents and younger brothers forming separate households.
The workings of the nuclear family in Laos, however, aremodified by the wider kin network which still plays an important role in individual family decision making, in the provisionof economic support, and various forms of mutual assistance,
especially with rituals. As the social anthropologist Elisabeth
Croll observed, across East, South and Southeast Asia, “withina variety of kinship systems, a high value is uniformly placedon familial obligation and harmony, the centre or core of which
is filial piety or duty” (Croll 2006,473).3 In the past this meant
obedience and respect for older generations and the subordination of the needs of the younger generations to those of theparents. The nature of this subordination varied, of course, fromsociety to society. As Croll points out, a cultural ideal was tohave a prosperous old age surrounded and supported by one’s
children. However, “a contemporary Asia-wide concern is thecommon fear that modernization or urbanization, migration,
new consumer aspirations and the introduction of new Western values have emphasised individual rather than collective
familial interests and thus eroded filial obligations” (ibid., 474).
The feared collapse of support for the older generation, however, has not come. But, as Croll and others have pointed out, the‘inter-generational contract’ has been re-negotiated, or in thecase of Laos, is in the early stages of re-negotiation.
In the traditional structure, resources flowed towards the senior
generations, but in the modern context and primarily becauseof the costs incurred by many years of education, resources
have been redirected towards the young. However, there isanxiety across the region that the young will not provide support or adequate support to the parents in their old age becauseof the changing values of the younger generation (ibid., 476).
In our survey, we asked people if they were worried whether
their children would care for them when they were old. Their
replies reflected some of the anxiety identified by Croll for Asia
in general. One might argue that those who said that they have
no worries are surprisingly low, and the category ‘worry sometimes’ probably conceals considerable variation in anxiety. The
replies to, ‘no resources no support’ entailed a recognition bypoorer people that if they did not provide important support
TABLE 1: Concern about child support
Frequency

Percent184

32.9

No resources no support

76

13.6

Worry sometimes

237

42.3

No response

63

11.2

Total

560

100

No worries

to their children then they could expect little from them in the
future. Those who gave no response often reacted simply witha shrug of their shoulders, a whatever will be, will be, attitude.
We also asked about residential preferences, i.e. if it werepossible for married children to live separately, would they doso, and an overwhelming number of them replied that children
would prefer to do so. Of course, this preference conforms to
the logic of the nuclear family, makes lines of authority with­individual households clearer (this is especially true for men
who live with their in-laws), and one might also add that living
separately suggests that you are rich enough to do so. Many, ofcourse, are not yet in this position. One also needs to qualify adesire to live separately with the often stated preference ofpeople to live not far away from their parents who they are
therefore able to visit as often as they like, and most importantly, call on for child-minding. Yet, it is also true that separate
residences clearly mark-off allegiances and reinforce tendencies
for the retention of money inside the nuclear family.
TABLE 2: Prefer to live apart from parents
Frequency

Percent

Prefer to live apart

419

74.8

Prefer to live with parents

70

12.5

No response

71

12

Total

560

100

There has never been any serious sociological research into
urban families in Laos, but one can be certain that fear concerning support in old age varies radically from social class tosocial class. Inheritance of the parental home by the caregiver
has been considered their ‘payment’ for providing care, while
those who have established separate families are more-or-lessreluctant to contribute to elderly up-keep. Among ordinary or
poor families there may be bad treatment of the elderly, and it
is not unusual to hear statements like, ‘you didn’t look after mewell, so why should I look after you?’ The neglect or even­mistreatment of elders in societies which have stressed ‘filial’
duties is under-researched, partly because it is such an embarrassment.4
Children are socialised to fear authority, and to not upset or
dispute with elders. Within the family men embody this authority and it was apparent from our focus groups that fathers weregenerally seen as more emotionally distant than mothers. Of
course, there are always individual exceptions. Almost all of ouryoung informants felt that they could approach their mothers
about any problems in their lives, and look to her to act as amediator with their father. A surprising number of young women said they could talk with their mothers about boyfriends.
But the issues of having relationships, love and sexuality are primarily discussed among friends, or maybe with older ­sisters orbrothers. In rural Laos, the guiding hand of parents and relatives
plays an important role in mate choice, but in the cities whereparents are unlikely to know most of their children’s friends andacquaintances, this guiding hand falls away and is replaced by
the peer group. The role and influence of peer groups have,naturally, been enhanced by young people’s use of mobile
15

telephones, and increasingly, the internet.
Violence in families is an important index of social relationships, but it is notoriously difficult to research. Nevertheless, we
attempted to enquire about this. For example, the use of force
by males on their wives (who are still considered socially subordinate to their husbands, despite political proclamations about
equality), is seen as illegitimate by 80.4% of our respondents,
6.6% saying it is sometimes okay, while 9.8% thought it was­legitimate. Again, the nature and extent of domestic violencein Laos remains under-researched,5 but our findings certainly
suggest that it is not condoned. As for the use of force to discipline children, 61.8% thought it was unnecessary, while 35.5%
thought it was necessary sometimes for ‘reasonable discipline.’
It appears to be an ethos that favours discussion over force.
Our student focus groups also saw a need for reasonable discipline for children, but at the same time they rejected serious
violence that led to injury of children. As one group agreed:“It is not necessary to use violence with youngsters because
they are really like blank sheets of paper, they don’t know thedifference between good and bad at all. If they do something
wrong we should explain to them. If we use violence it will only
make them react against us.” Another student recounted how,
after her father beat her badly, she felt like retaliating in kind.
Use of violence against wives was also rejected in general byyoung informants, and many thought it would be a source ofembarrassment for all concerned, though some said wives who
were chronic gamblers, who played cards constantly and neglected their housework, deserved to be disciplined.
We also asked a set of questions that often caused some unease; they were questions about how parents expressed theirlove towards their children and how the children reciprocated(and in table 4 it should be remembered that these are the­perceptions of parents).
TABLE 3: Parental expressions of love
Frequency

Percent

Support education

102

18.2

Give them whatever they wish

71

12.7

Teach them and be a good example

265

47.3

Provide encouragement

47

8.4

Listen to their reasoning

20

3.6

No response

55

9.8

Total

560

100

TABLE 4: Children’s expression of love to parents
Frequency

Percent

Listen to parents

199

35.5

Monetary support

33

5.9

Gifts on appropriate occasions

53

9.5

Help with family work

80

14.3

Look after when ill and/or old

98

17.5

No response

65

11.4

Buy food

32

5.7

Total

560

100

16

We asked the Lao youth in our focus groups the same questions and their replies mirrored their elder’s expectations. They
said that the best way they could show their love towards theirparents was to listen to them and obey them. Of course, once
again this is a statement of ideal practice, and is probably byand-large true given that the students in our focus groups weregenerally from among the best students (try as we might toget a greater spread, the schools would only select good students for us to interview). But, there are very real differences ofexperience between urban-based students and those who comefrom rural areas where parent-child relations remain more strictly
hierarchical. Some of the interesting variations and innovationsin practice mentioned by the students were celebrating, forexample­, the birthdays of their parents. The celebration of children’s birthdays, although recent, is already a well-establishedinnovation in Lao urban culture, where a cake is bought forthe child and ‘happy birthday’ is sung. This is one r­eflection ofsociety’s re-orientation towards the younger generation. Thatparents in some families are now incorporated into this celebration, is one of the signs of Lao adopting new forms to signal
the creation of ‘modern’ families. Such ideas about ‘modern
families’ are found in advertising in all its forms. In foreign family
programmes or films, and even in discussions about family
matters that one finds in women’s programmes on TV. The
open expressions of affection between parents and older­children, or husbands and wives, that is often shown in these
mediums, is still fairly rare in Laos. Our informants were often
quick to point out that this was not a practice in their families.
But there were some who spoke of just these sorts of practices
inside their own families. One suspects these families are among
the vanguard of ‘modernist’ cultural change in urban Laos.
All of our student respondents proclaimed their indebtedness to their parents for their opportunities to study to a highlevel, which as they are aware, is still a privilege in Laos. This was
especially true of rural students. Despite these deep feelings ofaffection and indebtedness felt by the student groups towards
their parents, they also stressed that that the way they and theirparents “think” is different. Some complained that their parents
were just too old fashioned. Many said this was because theyounger generation knew more about technology, used the­internet, maybe knew other languages like English, and knew
little about rural affairs.

Conclusion
Most people in Laos continue to live in the countryside (over70%) practicing largely traditional farming. A ‘generation gap’
has not really touched rural Laos and that is because people inthese villages still live traditional lives in the sense proposed by
Margaret Mead, and parents still provide the model for theirchildren’s future. But many people now travel beyond the village for education or to engage in migrant labor in the cities of
Laos, or in Thailand, and many do not return to live there.
One of the main issues of contention among the generations was youth sexuality, although it seems that parents havereluctantly conceded that they have lost this battle. Sexuality
and the apparent modern obsession with ‘love’ arises fromNo.67 Spring 2013

Wedding. Parents and relatives tie cotton strings on the newlyweds wrists as a way of offering blessings. Photo by author.

young people’s autonomy in partner choice, the emphasis oncompatibility, and the role of emotion and sexuality in the­creation of what social scientists refer to as a ‘companionate
marriage.’ That is where the interpersonal connection between
the couple eclipses the demands of the broader kin group.
Many Lao parents today did not have the same expectations
when they married and therefore can provide little guidance
for their children, and so this is taken over by the peer group.
In societies where the transition to ‘companionate marriage’has taken place, both parents and peers can provide guidance.
But for the foreseeable future, this will not be the case for mostyoung Lao and they will rely on their peers and friends.

Notes

References
Croll, Elisabeth J. 2006. The Intergenerational Contract in the
Changing Asian Family. Oxford Development Studies, Vol. 34: 4.

1

This project was conducted by the Lao National Institute for
the Social Sciences, and they employed me as their research adviser. Briefly, two methods were employed: amainly qualitative survey of 560 households, and 32 focus
groups conducted among high school and university­students (320 persons overall). This survey work entailed
185 villages in 59 districts of the three cities.

2

An abridged version of her book was translated into Lao toprovide some theoretical framework for the research.

3

Her article was also translated into Lao to provide a theoreticalreference point for the research project.

4

Charlotte Ikels (2004) provides many examples of this kind of
marginalisation and mistreatment of the elderly in so-called‘Confucian’ East Asia.

5

See the CUSO/GDG ‘Report on Rural Domestic Violence in the
Lao PDR.’
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/vaw/ngocontribute/
CUSO.pdf (accessed 10 Jan, 2013)

Ikels, Charlotte, ed. 2004. Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse inContemporary East Asia. Stanford: Stanford ­University Press.
Mead, Margaret. 1970. Culture and Commitment: A Study of
the Generation Gap. New York: The American Museum of
Natural History, Natural History Press/Doubleday & Company,
Inc. Garden City.

17

Archival Fragility: Philippine Cinema and the Challenge of
Sustainable Preservation
Bliss Cua Lim*
Visiting Research Fellow CSEAS

T

he urgency of Philippine cinema’s archival situation is wellrecognized: it is estimated that only 37% of domesticallyproduced­films survive (3,000 titles from approximately 8,000
works) since the introduction of the cinematograph in 1897.
Only a handful of feature-length Filipino films from the pre-war
era remain: Tunay na Ina [True Mother], Pakiusap [Plea], Giliw Ko[My Beloved] (Photo 1) — all from 1938 — and Zamboanga(1936), a “lost” film discovered at the U.S. Library of Congress
some years ago.1 As of 2005, only one nitrate film print survives,
Ibong Adarna (1941). (Photo 2)2 The fragility of the Philippine
audiovisual archive is all the more ironic when we consider that
the Philippines, in partnership with Australia’s National Filmand Sound Archive (NFSA), pioneered Southeast Asian media
archiving initiatives in the early 1990s.3 Since outpaced by its
Photo 1

SEA neighbors, the Philippines, an early pioneer of the regionalarchive movement in Southeast Asia, would become a late
­implementer of the archive dream, waiting another 15 years
before its own national film archive was set up in 2011. Meas­
ured against the 116-year span of our country’s AV history, statefunded national film archives have existed in the Philippines forless than a decade.
Research on Philippine cinema is thus circumscribed by theacute temporal pressures of archival crisis. A dearth of funding,a lack of political will, and the deterioration of media storage
formats conspire against a dwindling number of films. The firstnational film archive ever funded by the state, the Film Archivesof the Philippines (FAP), was established by the Marcos government in 1982 and shuttered shortly after the regime’s ouster in

Photo 3

Photo 2

Photo 1: Mila del Sol and Fernando Poe star in the romantic musical comedy, Giliw Ko [My Beloved, dir. Carlos Vander Tolosa, 1939].
Photo 2: Fred Cortes in Ibong Adarna [Adarna Bird, dir. Vicente Salumbides and Manuel Conde, 1941], Philippine cinema’s only surviving nitrate film print.
Photo 3: An image from Genghis Khan [dir. Manuel Conde, 1950] is featured on the cover of the National Film Archives of the Philippines’ first annual report, for2011-2012.

*Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine
18

No.67 Spring 2013

1986.4 Not until 2002 did the Philippine government legislate
the creation of another Philippine film archive under the incipient Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP);5 but
this one-line archival mandate was left unrealized for almost a
decade, until the founding of a new National Film Archive of
the Philippines (NFAP) in 2011 (Photo 3).6 Credit is due to current Chair Briccio Santos for being the first leader of the FDCP
to act on their archival mandate, and to the NFAP’s recentlyappointed­Head, Benedict “Bono” Olgado, for prioritizing thelong-term sustainability of the recently established nationalfilm archive.
The historic and long-awaited establishment of a new national film archive, and the promising pledge of support fromthe French government,7 however, have not entirely delivered
Philippine film history from its predicament. The new NationalFilm Archive is currently housed in an interim facility; a permanent archive is still in the planning stages, and its fate is dependent on firm political will and generous funding. The NFAP has
prioritized building up its collection, aided by a presidential
decree­, Administrative Order 26.8 The NFAP’s transitory archival
storage in facility in Cubao now holds about 11,300 elements,
36% on celluloid and 47% on analog videotape. The threevaults at the Cubao facility, one of which is set aside for highrisk audiovisual materials in advanced stages of deterioration,
boast round the clock environmental controls. The rapid growthof the NFAP collection — they are already at 70% capacity —means that new acquisitions are far outpacing the NFAP staff’s
capacity to accession them in a timely manner. If the NFAP isserious about its declared goal of becoming “a sustainable in­stitution that will preserve these materials for generations tocome,”9 then the number of qualified archivists must grow asquickly as the NFAP collection grows.
The first major film project undertaken by the NFAP, the restoration and repatriation of Manuel Conde’s 1950 film Genghis
Khan, was completed last year. Other ambitious restoration
projects are underway, notably Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag[Manila in the Claws of Neon], the 1975 film by Lino Brocka thatheralded the dawn of what Joel David calls “the Second GoldenAge” of Philippine Cinema.10 A new dynamism is palpable in­Philippine film archiving, but to understand the continuing urgency of a full realization of the Philippines’ archival mandate,
we need to go back to what happened in the long years before
the establishment of the NFAP.
The dismantling of the first FAP after 1986, and the eventual
opening of a new NFAP in 2011, left an institutional vacuum, ayawning 25-year gap that has been filled with terrible stories.
Filipino film historian Clodualdo “Doy” del Mundo Jr. recounts
that in 1994, LVN, a major studio in the forties and fifties, decided to discard films by other production companies that had
long remained unclaimed in its storage vaults. Only a handfulof production outfits retrieved their films upon being notifiedof the purge; the rest of the films – over a thousand rustingcans of celluloid comprising 72 titles – were dumped in thestudio’s open basketball court, exposed to months of sun andrain.11 The desperation that seized Filipino film and media archi-

vists in the 1990s, in the absence of a national archive, led to an
era of cooperation and collaboration in a decentralized archival
advocacy among the largest remaining AV archives in the
country. These stakeholders were composed of “government
and academic institutions,” chief among them the Cultural
Center of the Philippines (CCP), the Philippine Information­
Agency (PIA), the University of the Philippines Film Institute(UPFI), and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts
(NCCA), which funded several collaborative restoration projects.
Among the “private and industry-based institutions,” the sig­
nificant players are the Mowelfund Film Institute, the film
­studios, LVN Pictures and Sampaguita Pictures, and the broadcasting corporation, ABS-CBN, which has the premiere tem­
perature-controlled archival storage facility in the Philippines,
though being part of a commercial TV network inevitably constrains the nature of their archival efforts.12 The third group of
stakeholders include nongovernmental organizations and private individuals; in this category, the most important organization by far is SOFIA, the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film,which has functioned as the lead nongovernmental “coordinating body” in media preservation and restoration projects todate.13
Galvanized by the disastrous emptying of LVN’s storage
vaults, SOFIA in 1994 authored a “draft of a Master Plan to savethe Philippines’ Film Heritage.” Three initiatives introduced by
the “Master Plan” are highlighted here. First, the creation of asystematic inventory or “master list” of surviving Filipino films;
second, the reproduction and restoration of 20 designatedmasterpieces of Philippine cinema; and third, the dream of­establishing a national audiovisual archive.14 As to the first task,
an unpublished master inventory was drafted in 2005, a groundbreaking effort undertaken by SOFIA and the NCCA. Between
2002 to 2005, three seasoned archivists engaged in a painstaking reel-by-reel and tape by tape inspection of the various­media formats of existing archival holdings in the Philippines:“35mm, 16mm, Super-8; Betacam, Betamax, VHS, S-VHS, U-matic,
disc.”15 The master inventory lists 3,738 titles in various conditions ranging from excellent to good to “vinegar syndrome 2-3”,
plus a number of unlabeled reels in an advanced state of decay.
Of the second task of restoration and reproduction of canonical
Philippine films: 14 of 20 films prioritized for restoration in 1997
due to their “high heritage value,” have been restored to date.
The third part of the plan sketched by SOFIA, the establishmentof a permanent archival storage facility, has still not been realized. Within the next four years, the NFAP hopes to build a permanent archival storage facility, possibly in Tagaytay, but thatwill be dependent on firm political will and generous funding.16
For Jacques Derrida, archives come into being from the privileged melding of place, medial substrate, and the “authority” of
the “law”.17 In contrast to Derrida’s formulation, archives haveemphatically not been the place were the law meets the medial substrate for most of Philippine history, given the state’s­negligence towards film archiving. I am writing of this now on
the brink of change: the national film archives of the Philippines
was finally established last year, and the state is playing a newly
active role after 26 years of indifference.
Broadly, two crucial questions are posed by this moment
19when a newly established NFAP is reaching out to its constituents for support and collaboration. The first question concerns
the decades-long audiovisual archival vacuum from which thecountry is just emerging. As we know, there have to date only
been two national film archives in the Philippines: the shortlived archive Film Archives of the Philippines (FAP) during the
Marcos era; and the new NFAP established in 2011. What are
the consequences we’re living with from those 25 gap years,
that long interval during which the country was without a­national film archive?
NFAP Head Benedict “Bono” Olgado’s response to thisquestion emphasizes the tragic loss of not only countless films
but also information about them. This loss of continuity is“manifested in weak paper trails, unknown rights issues, unknown locations of films”, as well as the erosion of public­support and momentum for film preservation.18 Another important consequence of the long archival vacuum is that thearchival advocacy for film became both decentralized andprivatized. The state’s abdication of its responsibility to film
­history meant that a handful of private collectors stepped into
the breach. We owe a debt of gratitude to such private collectors, but a tension is inherent between the individual c­ ollector’s
impulse to privatization vis-a-vis the NFAP’s stated objective ofan archive that provides “permanent access” under the stewardship of the state. How this deep tension between decentralized
privatization and state centralization plays out r­emains to beseen.
We are on the brink of change: the NFAP has finally been
­established, and the state is playing a newly active role after
25 years of indifference. What are the consequences of thissudden shift from state indifference to a government that has
now taken the helm of the Philippine archiving movement?
As FDCP Chair Briccio Santos remarked, the long years ofstate indifference means that people’s willingness to work withthe government can sometimes be “laced with suspicion,”19­especially because the last administration keenly interested in
Philippine cinema was the Marcos regime. The need for trustand good working relationships among an archive’s constituency is as real as the need for a permanent archival facility tohouse our films. The state archive’s constituency, as Ray­Edmondson defines it, are the stakeholders, friends and supporters who will “defend the archive when it’s threatened”
but also serve as a “constructive critic,” a necessary counterbalance that keeps an archive “honest and in touch with its supporters.”20 Trust is also a temporal issue, an issue of time, as
Edmondson­notes in his statement on sustainability: “Archives
are inherently permanent entities ... government instrumentalities
come and go, but archives have to go on forever.”21
There is an inherent tension, as Edmondson notes, between
archival permanency and the shorter cycles of government­appointments. As a recent article by del Mundo in the Philippine Daily Inquirer points out, film archive initiatives in thePhilippines have historically been extremely susceptible to­changes in administration; projects prioritized by the FDCP under one leadership may not continued by the next presidential
appointee.22 Yet the extremely long-term temporality of real­archiving — which extends beyond a single person’s lifetime
20— contrasts strongly with the short-term cycles of term appointments for key government posts related to film. If the
NFAP is to realize its goal of “sustainable preservation,”23 then it
must wrestle with these temporal contradictions.
How to ensure the NFAP’s sustainability? To its credit, the
NFAP is tackling this question head on. The answer is likely to
be multi-pronged, a combination of a legislative agenda that
secures a Republic Act that amplifies the FDCP’s archival
mandate and guarantees continuity and funding for the­­archive; fiscal and staffing strategies that gain plantilla [permanent government staffing positions] to ensure that the archive
has qualified people to run its operations; partnerships withthe private sector or bilateral agreements with international
partners to provide funding and other forms of support, andto induce the state to maintain a certain “national composure”
where the archives are concerned.24
As Derrida observes, an archive is never an “assured” concept.
It is, rather, a “question of a response, of a promise and of a­responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to knowwhat that will have meant, we will only know in times tocome.”25 We will only know what the Philippine audiovisual­archive will have meant in times to come. This is not a failureof Philippine archiving, but only indexes, in a more overt form,
the always-in-process character of all archives in their struggle
against the twin processes of obsolescence and remembrance,
ephemerality and sustainability.

Notes
1

Nick Deocampo, “Zamboanga: Lost Philippine-Made Film Discovered in U.S. Archive.” Movement. February 2004, 2-7.

2Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA). 2005. Terminal Report:­Philippine Audiovisual Archives Collections: An Inventory.
Earlier Undated Draft entitled “Philippine Audiovisual Archives Collections: An Inventory” (hereafter referred to as
AV Heritage Inventory). Proponent: National Commission
for Culture and the Arts - Committee on Archives (NCCACA), with the Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA), 7–8.

3

“Philippines hosts first conference of AV archive institutions,”
The Southeast Asia-Pacific AV Archives Bulletin, Official
Quarterly Newsletter of the Southeast Asia-Pacific Audio-VisualArchive Association (SEAPAVAA) 1.1. January-March 1996: 1,
14.

4

According to most sources, the Film Archives of the Philippines (FAP) closed in 1986; however, in a roundtable­session at the National Film Archive of the Philippines’
Philippine Heritage Summit, held on January 25, 2013,­­Ernie de Pedro, former Director of the FAP, claimed that­foreign funding from four international organizations allowed him to keep the FAP open until 1989.

5

Republic Act 9167, “An Act Creating The Film Development
Council of the Philippines, Defining its Powers and Functions, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for other purposes,”No.67 Spring 2013

Congress of the Philippines, Twelfth Congress, First Regular
Session, 7 June 2002. The one-line archival mandate reads:“To ensure the establishment of a film archive in order toconserve and protect film negatives and/or prints as partof the nation’s historical, cultural, and artistic heritage.”
http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2002/
ra_9167_2002.html (accessed 15 December, 2012)
6

7

8

9

Bayani San Diego, Jr. “FDCP film archives now fully operational,”
Philippine Daily Inquirer, 9 July, 2011.
http://entertainment.inquirer.net/5147/fdcp-film-archivesnow-fully-operational. (accessed 10 December, 2012)“France to Assist Local Efforts to Upgrade Film Archives.” Sunstar Manila 28 November 2011.
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/2011/2011/2028/france-assist-local-efforts-upgrade-film-archivessystem-192969. (accessed 10 December, 2012)
President of the Philippines. “Prescribing the Rules on the­Deposit of Copies of Films and Other Audio-Visuals to the
National Film Archive of the Philippines.” Administrative­Order No. 26. Ed. Malacanang Palace, Manila , 17 April, 2012.

Dailiy Inquirer 27 October, 2011. http://entertainment.
inquirer.net/18699/finally-a-national-film-archive (accessed
15 December, 2012); and author’s personal interview
with Benedict “Bono” Olgado, 19 September, 2012, at the
National Film Archives of the Philippiens Operations office,70C 18th Avenue, Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines
17

Jacques Derrida. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression
Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
p. 3.

18

Benedict “Bono” Olgado. Personal interview with Bliss Cua
Lim, 19 September, 2012, at NFAP Archive Operations office,Cubao, Quezon City.

19

Briccio Santos, Personal interview with Bliss Cua Lim, 5 November 2012, Film Development Council of the Philippines
Office, Makati, Philippines.

20

Ray Edmondson, “Notes on Sustainability of Audiovisual Archives,” unpublished statement distributed at the Philippine
Cinema Heritage Summit, 25 January, 2013.

21

Edmondson, “Notes on sustainability.”

22

Clodualdo del Mundo Jr., The dream need not be a nightmare,Philippine Daily Inquirer, 23 January, 2013.
http://­entertainment.inquirer.net/77897/the-dream-neednot-be-a-nightmare. (accessed 25 January, 2013)23

National Film Archive of the Philippines, Annual Report, 20112012, 1.

24

Briccio Santos, personal interview with Bliss Cua Lim, 2012.

25

Derrida, ibid., p. 36.

NFAP Annual Report, 2011-2012, p.3.

10

Joel David. 1990. A Second Golden Age (an Informal History).
In The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema.
Manila: Anvil Publishing, pp. 1–17.

11

See Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr.’s pioneering work on Philippine
film archiving, Dreaming of a National Audio-Visual Archive,a SOFIA monograph for Ukay-Ukay: Where’s the Archive, aFestival of Restored Filipino Film Classics in Celebration of
SOFIA’s 11th Anniversary, 16-17 July, 2004, 16.

12

Report on Asean Seminar on Film and Video Archive Management. Held on 8 May to 3 June 1995, p. 5-6, Print; and Olgado, Benedict S. “Undergraduate Thesis Proposal: Towards a­National Film Archive, an Analysis of and a White Paper on
Policies and Practices in Film Preservation in the Philippines.” 2008, p. 3-4, Print.

13

Belina Capul. “Annex H: Toward a National Film Archive for thePhilippines, Presented at the Workshop/ Consultative Meeting on the Development Plan for Av Archiving in the Region: The Asean Catalogue of Film and Television Productions.” Quezon City, Philippines, 1-5 December, 1997, p.
3-4.

14

Annella M. Mendoza, Draft Elements for a Master Plan to Save
the Philippines’ Film Heritage (Society of Film Archivists, ­Sofia)
29 June, 1994, p. 1-4.

15

AV Heritage Inventory draft, p. 3.

16

Ramon C. Nocon. “Finally, a National Film Archive.” Philippine
21

Exploring Southeast Asian Studies Programs and Scholarly
Treasures in Japanese Institutions: A Preliminary Fieldwork Survey
Virginia Jing-yi Shih1
Former Visiting Research Fellow CSEAS

Introduction
Southeast Asian studies has internationalized in recent years,
but Japanese scholarship on Southeast Asia has not been
“widely publicized” in research, teaching, learning, and outreachin the United States as well as in other academies.2 My preliminary fieldwork survey at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies(CSEAS) was to explore the Southeast Asian studies programs
and scholarly resources at various institutions that o­ ffer Southeast Asian studies programs. The other purpose has been tocollect Southeast Asia research resources from the N­ ational­Institutes for the Humanities (NIH)3 for my comparative study
perspective in the field. This essay highlights my general observations, special collection research interests, and the next stepsof my research journey. It also aims to present this information
to Southeast Asianists who may not be familiar with the wealthof information that is available, collected and archived in Japan.

Fieldwork Site Visits
To gain a general overview of Southeast Asian studies andrelevant scholarly resources in social sciences and humanities,
I conducted intensive site visits in Chiba, Kyoto, Osaka, Tachikawa,Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagasaki as part of my first exploration
journey to establish personnel networking for future followups.4

Retrospective and Current Southeast Asia
Newspaper Holdings and Han Nom Special
Collections
Almost all libraries that collect Southeast Asia-related mate­rials subscribe to Southeast Asia newspapers in English andSoutheast Asian languages (primarily in Indonesian, Malay,
Contemporary Southeast Asia history textbooks on display in a bookstore in TokyoT­agalog, Thai and Vietnamese) for their primary clientele.
Among them, the Institute of Developing Economies Library5
and the Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library6 have significant holdings of retrospective and current newspapers for
public access. It is gratifying to know that Southeast Asia news
sources are one of the top priorities in Southeast Asia collection
development at Japanese institutions.
The Toyo Bunko7 (The Oriental Library), a private research­institution in Tokyo, has the most comprehensive and wellpreserved­Han Nom8 rare book collection in Japan. Its Han
Nom holdings serve as one of the best primary sources for premodern Vietnamese studies. All texts are in original version of
double leaves, oriental style and elegantly bound in fabric cases.
The bulk of the Han Nom holdings are gift collections by Mr.
Nagata Yasukichi9 who served as consul general in Hanoi from1930 to 193310 and ­Professor Yamamoto Tatsuro who was­regarded as the pioneering scholar of Vietnamese studies in­Japan.11 Toyo Bunko has the most complete 大越史記全書(Complete Annals of Great Viet) in various classical Chinese editions for a comprehensive study of pre-modern Vietnamese
historiography.12 Specific ­titles of the Han Nom collection
ranging from classics, history to philosophy, and literature are
well-documented­in the following catalogs that patrons may
request to page the items and conduct ­research onsite in thereading room:
Iwai Hirosato 岩井大慧. 1935. Nagata Yasukichi-shi shūshū
­Annan-bon Mokuroku 永田安吉氏蒐集安南本目錄. Japan: [s.n.]Tōyō Bunko 東洋文庫. 1939. Tōyō Bunko Chōsen-bon Bunrui
Mokuroku, fu, Annam-bon Mokuroku 東洋文庫朝鮮本分類目錄：附・安南本目錄. Tokyo: Tōyō Bunko.
Tōyō Bunko 東洋文庫. 1999. Kodaishi Kenkyū Iinkai. 古代史研究委員會. Tōyō Bunko Zō Etsunan-bon Shomoku 東洋文庫蔵越南本
書目. Tokyo: Tōyō Bunko, 1999.
Tōyō Bunko 東洋文庫. 2012. Yamamoto Tatsurō Hakushi Kizōsho
Mokuroku. Wa-Kansho, Etsunan Bunken Hen 山本達郎博士寄贈書
目錄. 和漢書・越南文献篇. Tōkyō : Tōyō Bunko, p. 281-289.
In addition to the above, the Han Nom Microfilm Collection
contains approximately four standard bookshelves of Han Nom
holdings in facsimile reproduction from the microfilm collection of École française d'Extrême-Orient Library in Paris andthese are merged with the Toyo Bunko Han Nom Collection.13

Keio Institute of Oriental Classics
The Keio Institute of Oriental Classics14 at Keio University­received the prominent Henri Maspero15 (1883-1945) gift collection of Vietnamese studies including Han Nom holdings but
22

Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) publications at CSEAS librarythe entire collection is yet to be processed for public access.
The collection includes Han Nom texts primarily in history andliterature, Vietnamese and French monographs, journals andnewspapers holdings. The Maspero collection would serve as
primary and secondary sources for pre-modern Vietnamesestudies at Keio in the future.

Osaka University Library on the Minoh campus
The Osaka University Library on the Minoh campus has modest Han Nom holdings of about 20 titles related to Vietnamese
history and literature. They serve as useful reference sources forstudents interested in Han Nom textual readings.

Southeast Asia Special Collections
Besides the general Southeast Asia holdings at the institutions that I visited, I would like to highlight a few notable
Southeast Asia special collections here. The Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo owns the
Tanaka Norio Collection of monographs primarily in Dutch
about Indonesian studies and the Takigawa Tsutomu Collectionof 2,050 monographs in Japanese and European languages­related to Southeast Asian studies.16 The Center for Southeast
Asian Studies Library at Kyoto University has four special collections: the Charas Collection,17 the Foronda Collection,18 theOcampo Collection,19 and the Indonesia Islam Collection thathave been highly regarded as valuable sources for Southeast
Asian studies.
The Institute of Social Sciences at Waseda University received
two renowned special gift collections for Indonesian studies:
the Nishijima Collection20 of about 400 volumes regarding theJapanese military administration in Indonesia and the Masuda
Collection21 of over 1,200 documents of primary sources forpost-independence Indonesia. The Mauro Garcia Collection22
at the Central Library of Sophia University is a gift collection
on Filipiniana studies collected by Mauro Garcia (1906-1982), a
Filipino historian and bibliographer. It includes 5,320 titles ofmonographs and journals primarily in English and Filipino­languages and a few items in Japanese and Chinese as well as
important documents about the Japanese occupation in thePhilippines. The entire collection was professionally c­ atalogedusing the Library of Congress classification system. It is highly
recommended to contact the respective holding i­nstitutions inadvance for onsite research access to those ­special collections.

Future Research
My intensive fieldwork survey covered site visits, data gathering, evaluative analysis of explorations and vis-à-vis informalinterviews with relevant faculty members, researchers, lecturers,
administrators, librarians, curators and graduate students in thehumanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The survey­experience has benefited me immensely in framing the next
steps of my research project in the following directions in the
future. Firstly, how can I share my study of Japanese Southeast
Asia scholarship and librarianship with the global academic
Southeast Asia community through presentations and project
initiatives? Secondly, how can I create a short-term and longterm intellectual impact on Japanese Southeast Asia collection
development enrichment through library acquisitions, gifts
and exchanges of scholarly works as well as through potential
collaboration with Japanese institutions? Thirdly, how can I
promote and facilitate Japanese Southeast Asia scholarship­
through print and digital resources via interlibrary lending andopen access to the international Southeast Asia community?
Fourth, how can I articulate and implement the three key
points of my fieldwork observations which are a) Local resources,
global treasures; b) One mission, one community; and c) a
“Heart, Head & Hands” self-motivated principle to better serve
the global Southeast Asia constituencies in the field? Finally,
how best can I combine wireless technology and mobile devices and applications in promoting technological and information literacy to make ubiquitous e-learning of Southeast Asia
scholarship possible?

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Shimao, Minoru and Sakurai, Yumio. 1999. Vietnamese Studies
in Japan, 1975-96. Acta Asiatica 76: 81-105.

東南アジア学会 (Tōnan Ajia Gakkai). 2009. 東南アジア史研究の展開 [Tōnan Ajiashi Kenkyū no Tenkai - Developments inState of Thai Studies in Japan: 1996-2006. A revised edition by theJapanese Society for Thai Studies.
http://thai.chiiki.tsukuba.ac.jp/Journal/Thai%20Studies%20
in%20Japan%201996-2006.pdf/file_view (accessed 2 Jan, 2013)

Southeast Asian Studies]. Tōkyō: Yamakawa Shuppansha.

Takada, Yoko. 1991. Vietnamese Historical Studies in Japan.
Asian Research Trends: A Humanities and Social Science Review,
1: 75-92.
Tokyo Daigaku; Toyo Bunka Kenkyujo. 1996. Asia in the Twentyfirst Century: Toward a New Framework of Asian Studies: A
Conference: September 12-13, 1995, Sanjo Hall, University ofTokyo. Tokyo: Institute of Oriental Culture, University of­Tokyo.
Watanabe, Yoshinari. 1991. Burmese Historical Studies in Japan:
The 1970s and 1980s. Asian Research Trends: A Humanities
and Social Science Review, 1: 115-133.
[Japanese Sources]
Ajiken World Trends, March 2007. アジ研ワールド・トレンド 200724

Hachijūnenshi - 80-Year History of the Toyo Bunko]. Tōkyō:Tōyō Bunko, 3.

山本達郎 (Yamamoto Tatsurō), 山本澄子 (Yamamoto Sumiko).
2012. 東洋文庫．山本達郎博士寄贈書目錄．欧文、南・東南
アジア諸言語文献篇 [Catalogue of Dr. T. Yamamoto Col-lection in Toyo Bunko Books in European, South Asian andSoutheast Asian Languages]. Tōkyō: Tōyō Bunko.
矢野正隆 (Yano Masataka). 2010.「ベトナムの漢字・字喃文献」
漢字文献情報処理研究会．日本中国語 CAI 研究会．漢字文献
情報処理研究 [Vietnamese Kanji: Nom Collections]. Journalof Japan Association for East Asian Text Processing, 11: 163-169.
[Vietnamese Sources]
桃木至朗 (Momoki Shiro). 2005. Việt Nam học ở Nhật Bản: quákhứ, hiện tại và tương lai. [Vietnamese Studies in Japan:
Past, ­Present and Future]. Paper presented at the second
VJSE (Vietnam-Japan Students Exchange), Osaka Univer­sity, 5 November. Website: http://www.vysa-osaka.org/vn/(accessed­2 Jan, 2013)

No.67 Spring 2013

Notes
1

Virginia Jing-yi Shih was a former Visiting Research Fellow at
the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) of Kyoto
University. She is Librarian in charge of the Southeast Asia
Collections at the University of California, Berkeley (USA).
She is deeply indebted to CSEAS for its funding supportand special thanks are due to the faculty, scholars, librarians,
colleagues, and graduate students whom she consulted at
CSEAS and beyond for their advice, recommendations orreferrals to make her intensive fieldwork in 2012 possible.
This is a brief work-in-progress report for information sharing. Please note that all web-based citations in this report
are accessible as of 14 January, 2013.

2

In recent years, there have been many academic inquiries into
scholarship on Southeast Asia. See references for a brief
overview of some of the work that has come out.

3

The National Institutes for the Humanities are one of the fourgroups of the Inter-University Research Institutes that are
regarded as world-class research institutes in Japan. The
National Institutes for the Humanities include six national
institutions: International Research Center for JapaneseStudies, National Institute for Japanese Language andLinguistics­, National Institute of Japanese Literature,
National­Museum of Ethnology, National Museum ofJapanese­History, and Research Institute for Humanity andNature. Their research library holdings reflect the strengthsof their scholarship to meet the research needs of theirrespective­primary clientele. They provide a national perspective of leadership and scholarship that can be applied
as a comparative study for Southeast Asian studies.

4

One other place which merits special attention for those whoare not familiar in where to search for materials is Jinbōchō,well-known as the center for antiquarian booksellers,­major bookstores and publishing houses in Tokyo. I visitedJinbōchō for an overview of historical and contemporary
Japanese book publishing and foreign book importing andexporting business through special order requests. A handful of Southeast Asia-oriented works are available at a few
bookstores shelved under world history, oriental history,
fine arts, religions, foreign language learning and teaching,world literature, world maps and travel guides. Directory ofbookstores in Jinbōchō: http://jimbou.info/ (accessed 3 Jan,
2013)

5

http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Library/index.html (accessed 2 Jan,
2013)

6

http://rnavi.ndl.go.jp/asia/entry/about-en.php (accessed 2 Jan,
2013)

7

http://www.toyo-bunko.or.jp/ToyoBunko-E/index-e.html(accessed­2 Jan, 2013)8

Han refers to classical Chinese while Nom refers to the Vietnamese demotic script derived from classical Chinese.

9

The Nagata Yasukichi Vietnamese Collection of 103 items in
695 volumes including Han Nom holdings was transferredto Toyo Bunko in 1934. Source: Directory Database of­Research and Development Activities.
http://read.jst.go.jp/public/cs_sgn_010EventAction.do?lang_act1=E&action1=event&sgn_code=5000004291&judge_
act1=2 (accessed 2 Jan, 2013)10

Minami Yoshizawa, “The Nishihara Mission in Hanoi, July 1940,”
in Indochina in the 1940s and 1950s: Translation of Contemporary Japanese Scholarship on Southeast Asia, edited by
Takashi­Shiraishi and Motoo Furuta. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast
Asia Program, Cornell University, 1992, p. 45.

11

Shiba Yoshinobu, ed. (John Wisnom translator), Treasures of
the Toyo Bunko. Tokyo: The Tōyō Bunko, 2008, p. 217

12

引田利章 (Hikita Toshiaki), 大越史記全書 (Daietsu Shiki Zensho),Tōkyō: Hikita Toshiaki, Meiji 18 [1885] (10 vols). The contents
include: 1. 越鑑通孝総論 2. 外紀全書 3-5. 本紀全書（呉士連編）6-8. 本紀実錄 9. 本紀続編（范公著）10. 本紀続編追加（黎僖編）．For background information, please see http://tinyurl.com/7lowxux (accessed 2 Jan, 2013)13

http://www.efeo.fr/index.php?l=EN (accessed 2 Jan, 2013)14

http://www.sido.keio.ac.jp/usage/about_shido.html (accessed
2 Jan, 2013)15

Henri Maspero was a distinguished French Sinologist and ascholar of Vietnamese linguistics.

16

Catalog of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, theUniversity of Tokyo, 2012, p. 22-23 (English version)

17

Marasri Sivaraks (compiler), Catalog of Thai Cremation Volumes
in the Charas Collection, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Library, Kyoto University (3 vols). Kyoto: ­Center for Southeast
Asian Studies, Kyoto University, 1989.

18

Marcelino A. and Cresencia R. Foronda, A Filipiniana Bibliography, 1743-1982: (A Classified Listing of Philippine Materials in
the Marcelino A. and Cresencia R. Foronda Private Collection).
Manila: Philippine National Historical Society, 1981. For­related reference citations, please see also Marcelino A.
­Foronda. An Iloko Bibliography: A Listing of Iloko Materials
in the Foronda Private Collection. Manila: De La Salle ­College
Library, 1972.

19

The Ocampo Collection is named after Professor Ambeth R.
Ocampo, a prominent Filipino historian and Chairman of
the National Historical Commission of the Philippines. The
collection includes 1,000 volumes of rare books, journals
and ephemeral materials regarding the Philippine politics
and cultural history.

20

The Nishijima Collection: Materials on the Japanese Military­Administration in Indonesia. Tokyo: Institute of Social Sci­
ences, Waseda University, 1973.

21

The Masuda Collection: A Catalogue of Materials Pertaining
to Post-independence Indonesia. Tokyo: Institute of Social
Sciences, Waseda University, 1997.

22

ガルシアコレクション目錄 (Garushia Korekushon Mokuroku).

Catalog of Mauro Garcia Collection. Tōkyō: Jōchi Daigaku­Toshokan, 1997.
25

36th Southeast Asian Seminar— Cities and Cultures in Southeast Asia —Mario Lopez
Assistant Professor CSEAS

B

etween 20-23 November 2012, the Center for Southeast
Asian Studies (CSEAS), in collaboration with the CebuanoStudies Center of the University of San Carlos, held its 36th
Southeast Asia Seminar entitled “Cities and Cultures in South­
east Asia.” Twenty participants of 13 nationalities were selectedfrom over 340 applicants to travel to Cebu City, the Philippines,
where they were joined by six Philippine participants, to engage in intensive discussion on one of the most salient issues
in the region: the rapid emergence and growth of cities andtheir impact in the lives of citizens in the region.
Southeast Asia has some of the world’s largest and most­vibrant cities. Roughly 250 million people or over 40% of the
population in the region, live in urban areas. Mega-cities like
Manila, Jakarta, and Bangkok are home to more than ten­million people each, and serve as administrative and financial
centers as well as migration, transportation and communication hubs. Singapore is touted as a “global city,” a status towhich Kuala Lumpur also aspires. “Secondary cities” like Cebu, where the Seminar was held - Chiang Mai, Penang and Surabaya
have histories and cultures that are as rich as those of the­national capitals from whose shadows they are emerging aspart of larger, polycentric urban systems (including corridors)
and networks across the region.
Over three days of lectures and group discussions, the semi-

Participants in the 2012 Seminar gathering for a group photo26

nar looked at the social and cultural processes and practices
that have played out in the region; how cities have emerged,
grown, decayed and changed; and how Southeast Asians areinterpreting and voicing these transformations. Cities are­concentrations of people, goods, capital, and infrastructurein space and across time; sites of power; objects of fantasies,
aspirations, and “planning.” They are concentrated spaces of­cultural, national and world “heritage.” Furthermore, they also
fulfill the aim of functioning as the subject of literature, cinema,and other forms of representation. And importantly, they are
arenas of contestation, struggle, and negotiation involving­individuals, groups, communities, and institutions: the fundamental basis for social transformation.
Participants, with their own training, understandings andconceptualizations of urban change in Southeast Asia discussed the fast paced blurring of boundaries between theurban­and rural, the increasing connections and hierarchies
within and between cities and megacities, and how second-tierand s­ maller urban areas are making themselves felt in the culture, politics, and economy of Southeast Asian countries.
Three separate sessions were thematically organized along
the themes “History and Heritage,” “Cities and Urban Communities,” and “Economic Transformation and Political Negotiation.”
The keynote address by Resil Morajes, one of the most promi-

nent Philippinists active today, set the theme for the three
days: what kind of conceptual tools do we need to be able tounderstand the wax and wane of the growth and transformation of cities in the 21st century? Morajes examined the conceptual possibilities and limits of a mandala for urban history andtried to build not a theory, but rather, encourage discussion on
how we can rethink the growth of cities, taking Cebu as a casestudy. Morajes set the agenda by stating that for cities to bemeaningful and satisfying places for those who dwell in them,a vision of coherence and wholeness must drive those­engaged in the cities’ making.
The “History and Heritage” session dealt with how cities­figure in history and the imagination of those writing about
them. Chris Baker looked at eighteenth-century Ayutthaya interms of its previous booming, industrious and cosmopolitan
features, in effect asking us to re-read the past in a new light.
Jose Bersales explained the contested politics of imagining andcreating Cebu’s heritage and how this plays out in understandings and policy toward the modern day city. Hope Sabanpan-yu
and Neil J. Garcia both explored how the city metaphoricallyplays out in literature, looking at gender roles and how the city,
as a neocolonial construction articulates and influences gay
and lesbian identities.
The “Cities and Urban communities” session followed up on
the discussion on how cities articulate their residents and theimagination. This session focused more specifically on how
ideas of cities shape the life processes and trajectories of theirresidents, and how people make and remake their cities.
­Nathan Badenoch, a linguist working in Southeast Asia, lookedat three cases of the convergence of community, language,
and cities to examine the tensions between the forces of­homogenization and diversification of languages in the region.
What Badenoch strongly emphasized was how cities can promote resistance to trends to homogenization that are usuallypromoted by national policy. Kenta Kishi, talked about the possibilities for self expression in urban spaces, discussed problems
and solutions to contemporary urban development projects,
framing his discussion within the re-discovery of positive­potentials of urban community in contemporary Asian cities.
Focusing on a form of “allegiance to being consistent,” Kishi­argued that “consistency” is a key to protecting and ensuring
our efforts to achieve planning goals in the context of urban
landscapes in Southeast Asia. Loh Kah Seng, a historian, shifted
attention to “emergencities.” Looking back into Singapore’s­history, Kah Seng spoke of the typecasts of disorderly urban
growth in the creation and planning of stable postcolonialstates. He explained how expert knowledge discourses shaped
urban terrains in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century,and traced their echoes into the present to see how they
­impact upon understandings of expert-based disaster management. By looking at how states received the advice of inter­national urban planning experts, our attention was brought to
how policy makers, bureaucrats, and residents measured thevaried responses toward development of urban cities
The final session, “Economic transformation and political­negotiation” emphasized the disproportionate share of wealththat national capitals in the region command. Urbanization incities has also shaped the various classes, yet capital accumulation has also led to schisms in cities whereby the urban poor
co-inhabit the same spaces as gated communities. Pasuk
Phongpaichit, speaking on trends in inequality, focused oncontextualizing the contestation that took place between the

Display produced from a discussion group focusing on presentations given bylecturers.

Yellow and the Red Shirts in Thailand’s contemporary politics.
Phongpaichit made clear how different actors expressed andunderstood the urban-rural divide and how it was most pronounced in their political consciousness, aspirations, expectations toward the Thai government, consumption and lifestyles,
and hopes and dreams about themselves and their family.
What comes out of her commentary is that the rural population in Thailand is now a major force that is making more political demands to participate in electoral politics. When demands
are resisted, tension, as evidenced in Bangkok in recent years,
becomes palpable in urban areas. Okamoto Masaaki, a politicalscientist working on Indonesia, further highlighted how classes
operate in large urban areas in Southeast Asia. Through ananalysis of the Betawi, indigenous Jakartans, Okamoto suggested that there are new ways to interpret metropolitan class andidentity politics. Yet, this is only when the historical roots andthe contrast between the Betawi and other groups who sharethe urban space are factored into any consideration of electoraland bureaucratic politics in the megacity. He succinctly explained how the new middle and upper-middle classes impact
upon Jakarta’s urban politics. Finally, Kusaka Wataru, discussed
class politics as they play out in Metro Manila. Whereas moststudies on the Philippine’s class politics have been conductedfrom the perspective of unequal distribution of wealth andmodes of production between two parties, Kusaka persuasively
argued that this focus misses the moral aspects of class politics.
That is, the struggle over who gets to define rightness anddraw moral borders that divide those who are right and wrong.
­Analyzing the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA),
Kusaka showed that the Authority’s governance offers a falseprescription through moral discourse which ultimately“camouflages” the real problems that afflict the urban landscape: an unequal socio-economic structure in which the poor
cannot help violate laws to make ends meet.
What the seminar drove home for all participants is the needto further understand the growing changes that are radicallyaltering the growth of megacities, the connections between
them and national hinterlands, and the dense networks which
traverse them. If we are to further pursue the nature of cities inthe twenty-first century, then we need to continue to question
them on their own terms in order to develop a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of their growing power andinfluence in the Southeast Asian region.
27

Publications

Kyoto CSEAS Series of Asian Studies No.7

Kyoto Area Studies on Asia (in Japanese) No. 25

Popular Culture Co-productions andCollaborations in East and Southeast Asia

Grassroots Globalization: Cultural Practices andLivelihood Strategies in a UNESCO DesignatedWorld-Heritage Rice Terrace Village

Edited by Nissim Otmazgin and Eyal Ben-Ari. 2012. NUS Press andKyoto University Press

Kyoto CSEAS Series of Asian Studies No. 8

Humanosphere Lectures Vol. 4 (in Japanese)

Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution:
The State and Military in Burma, 1962–88

Regeneration of Tropical Biomass Society— Perspectives from Peatland Studies in Indonesia

Nakanishi, Yoshihiro. 2013. NUS Press and Kyoto University Press

Edited by Kawai Shuichi, Mizuno Kousuke, Fujita Motoko. 2013.
Kyoto: Kyoto University Press

Kyoto CSEAS Series of Asian Studies No. 9

Organizing under the revolution unions andthe State in Java 1945–48
Suryomenggolo, Jafar. 2013. NUS Press and Kyoto University Press

28

Shimizu, Hiromu. 2013. Kyoto University Press

How is China Changing East Asia?:
The 21st Century Regional System (in Japanese)
Shiraishi Takashi and Caroline Sy HAU. 2012.
Tokyo: Chuokoron-shinsho.

Visiting Fellows
CSEAS is accepting applicants semiannually for about 14­ ositions for scholars and researchers who work on SoutheastpAsia, or any one of the countries in that region, to spend 3 to 12
months in Kyoto to conduct research, write, or pursue other
scholarly activities in connection with their field of study. Since
1975, more than 270 distinguished scholars have availed
themselves of the Center’s considerable scholarly resourcesand ­enjoyed the invigorating atmosphere of scenic Kyoto, the­ancient capital of Japan and the main repository of the country’s cultural treasures, to pursue their interests in Southeast
Asian Area Studies. The Center’s multi-disciplinary characterand the diverse research interests of its faculty offer visiting
scholars an ideal opportunity for the exchange of ideas andthe cultivation of comparative perspectives. The highly competitive selection process has brought to the Center in recent
years researchers from Southeast Asian countries, Bangladesh,
China, Korea, and western countries including the United Statesand France. The visiting fellows represent various basic disciplines in their study of Southeast Asia, and their official posts

Name

Periodin their home institutions include teacher, researcher, librarian,journalist, and NGO worker. Information and Technology (IT)experts who conduct research on Southeast Asia are also
joining the Center, not only to manage various database systems but also to construct academic networks for area study
throughout the world. Successful applicants receive an appropriate stipend to cover international travel, housing, and living
expenses in Kyoto. Research funds will also be provided to facilitate his/her work. Funds will also be allocated for domestic
travel, subject to government regulations, and a number ofother facilities are available to visiting scholars. Fellows will be
expected to reside in Kyoto for the duration of their fellowshipperiod. Fellows are normally invited to deliver a public lectureduring their term at the Center and encouraged to submit anarticle for possible publication in the Center’s journal, Southeast
Asian Studies and to contribute to the online journal Kyoto
Review of Southeast Asia. CSEAS also received researchers,
both Japanese and foreign, who visit on their own funds or on
external fellowships.

Affiliation/Position

Research Title
The Global in the National and Local: An
Ethnographic Study of Climate Change
and Financial Governance in Timor Leste

Siapno, Marie Jacqueline Aquino10.30.2012~4.30.2013

Political Advisor, Democratic Party, Timor
Leste

Lim, Felicidad Cua

12.1.2012~5.31.2013

Associate Professor, Department of Filmand Media Studies, School of Humanities, Troubled Archive
University of California, Irvine

Wiramihardja, Suhardja Djadja

1.1.2013~6.30.2013

Professor, Institut Teknologi Bandung

Ethnoastronomy in Indonesia: A Case from
West Java

Streckfuss, David Eirich

2.4.2013~7.31.2013

Honorary Fellow, University of
Wisconsin-Madison

Thailand on the Cusp: The Thai Monarchyand Lese Majeste in Historical andComparative Perspective

Cho, Hung-Guk

3.1.2013~8.31.2013

Professor, Graduate School ofInternational Studies, Pusan National
University

Reinterpretation of King Chao Anouvong(1804-1828) of Vieng Chan and Lao historical perception of Thailand

Howard, Elizabeth Whittem

3.25.2013~9.24.2013

Reader in the Art & Archaeology ofSoutheast Asia, School of Oriental &African Studies (SOAS)

Mapping Myanmar Archaeology: Local andRegional Networks of Inland and Maritime
Cultures

Nguyen, Thi Kim Cuc

1.9.2013~6.29.2013

N.A.

Are Marginalized Populations Segregatedin the Wake of Disasters? Lessons
Learned from Japan and Thailand.

Widoyoko Darmaji

2.10.2013~8.9.2013

Student of Development Studies at
Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB)

A Study on Eco Airport in Indonesia

Ouyyanont, Porphant3.10.2013~4.23.2013

Associate Professor, School of Economics, Contemporary Thai Problems in the
Sukhothai Thammathirat Open university Perspective of Economic History

Rd. Panji Poernomo Reditya
Anoem Wardono

1.15.2013~3.25.2013

Post Graduate Student, Development
Studies, Bandung Institute of Technology

The role of the Creative Economy on
Sustainable Development in the city ofBandung

Iswar Abidin

1.15.2013~3.25.2013

Post Graduate Student, Development
Studies, Bandung Institute of Technology

Disaster Risk Management

Tiktik Dewi Sartika

1.15.2013~3.25.2013

Post Graduate Student, Development
Studies, Bandung Institute of Technology

Science and Technology (S&T) Policy for
Traditional Medicine

List of Visiting Research Fellow, Visiting Researcher, and Visiting Project Researcher at CSEAS

29

Since its first publication in 1963, the bilingual quarterly Southeast Asian Studies (SEAS), Kyoto University
has reflected the Center for Southeast Asian Studies’ strong commitment to publishing the best of empirically grounded, multidisciplinary, and contemporary research on Southeast Asia and related areas.
In 2012, we re-launched Southeast Asian Studies as an all-English journal, alongside its Japanese sisterjournal, Tonan Ajia Kenkyu. Intended for a regional as well as global readership, Southeast Asian Studies ispublished three times a year.
The new journal aims to promote excellent, agenda-setting scholarship and provide a forum for dialogue and collaboration both within and beyond the region. Southeast Asian Studies engages in wideranging­and in-depth discussions that are attuned to the issues, debates and imperatives within the region,
while affirming the importance of learning and sharing ideas on a cross-country, global, and historicalscale. An integral part of the journal’s mandate is to foster scholarship that is capable of bridging the continuing divide in area studies between the social sciences and humanities, on the one hand, and the natural sciences, on the other hand. To this end, the journal welcomes accessibly written articles that build on
insights and cutting-edge research from the natural sciences. The journal also publishes research reports,
which are shorter but fully peer-reviewed articles that present original findings or new concepts that result
from specific research projects or outcomes of research collaboration.

International Advisory Board
Anthony John Stanhope REID (Australian National University, Australia)
Christopher John BAKER (Independent Researcher, Thailand)
Filomeno V. AGUILAR Jr. (Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines)
Guy François TREBUIL (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomiquepour le développement, France)
Hjorleifur Rafn JONSSON (Arizona State University, USA)
Jefferson M. FOX (East-West Center, USA)SUGIHARA Kaoru (The University of Tokyo, Japan)
Hsin-Huang Michael HSIAO (Academia Sinica, Taiwan)
Pasuk PHONGPAICHIT (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand)Paul H. KRATOSKA (NUS Press, Singapore)
SHIRAISHI Takashi (Institute of Developing Economies Japan External Trade Organization /Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan)
TANAKA Koji (Kyoto University, Japan)
Yunita Triwardani WINARTO (University of Indonesia, Indonesia)
Southeast Asian Studies Vol.2 No.1 April 2013 (Forthcoming)
Special Issue: Upland Peoples in the Making of History in Northern Continental Southeast Asia
Guest Editor: Christian Daniels

VISUAL DOCUMENTARY PROJECT"Care" in Southeast Asia:
Everyday and into the Future
The Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University will host afilm forum to show five selected documentaries by independent, young filmmakers from Southeast Asia, on the topic of“care.”Date and Time: March 15 (Fri) 13:00-18:15 P.M.

Venue: Large Conference Room,Inamori Foundation Building 3rd Floor
Care, is one of the most important aspects of human life at any time in ourlife cycle and is a fundamental part of all societies. Yet, the term “care” is western and has no exact corresponding term in Asian languages.
This film forum hopes to stimulate, and raise awareness of how Southeast
Asian filmmakers consider the relevance and meaning of “care,” and how theyvisually document it in their own societies.
Five documentaries were selected from a total of 36 original entries submitted from the region. This is an open forum and we invite anyone who isinterested to participate.
http://sea-sh.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/visual_documentary_project/
For inquiries: webmaster@cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, 46 Shimoadachi-cho, Yoshida, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
Tel: +81-75-753-7302 Fax: +81-75-753-7350
京都大学東南アジア研究所 〒606-8501 京都市左京区吉田下阿達町46 Tel: 075-753-7302 Fax: 075-753-7350

Editors: Mario Lopez, Ishikawa Noboru

Date of Issue: 31.03.2013〈編集〉
マリオ・ロペズ 石川

登
ISSN 2185-663X