• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.23-55
• /
• 2023

Just as globalization has many aspects and has developed in various, sometimes contradictory ways with both positive and negative impacts, so too would the reverse process of deglobalization have wide-ranging effects for individuals, communities, and nations. Some parts of globalization began to fray during the coronavirus pandemic (e.g. failing supply chains and disarray in the global shipping industry). Deglobalization would bring about much more significant changes in focusing on local production and consumption, eschewing non-essential flights and international tourism, and replacing personal experience with virtual presence. These impacts would be particularly severe for Vietnam, since its government has placed intensive connectivity with global production at the center of its model for the rapid development on which much of its legitimacy rests and it has joined as many international, multilateral organizations, and protocols as it has been able to do. Through critical analysis of secondary data from a wide range of sources, this paper examines the motivations that people, institutions, and governments might have to pursue deglobalization and then seeks evidence for whether the changes that would bring have started to affect Vietnam. While it is difficult to be too certain about this while the pandemic continues, it is evident that pressures are building in the global north to reconfigure supply chains for greater security, to reduce carbon emissions through regulating long-distance exchanges, and to withdraw from personal contacts. It is argued that a focus on digitalization in economy and society will help to mitigate the negative effects of deglobalization on Vietnam, at least in the medium-term.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.57-90
• /
• 2023

China launched the Digital Silk Road (DSR) in 2015 as part of the existing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to expand its influence in digital and technological development across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Southeast Asia is one of the key targets of the Digital Silk Road due to its geographical proximity to China and the rapid growth of the digital sphere. Although the DSR opens several potential opportunities for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states to foster the digitalization process in the region, how each country reacts to projects under the DSR is varied. Secondly, Vietnam is the only ASEAN member state that has not signed any official agreement under the BRI framework, and thirdly, Vietnam opted out of Huawei technology. This paper aims to understand the perspective of Vietnam and how Vietnam has responded to the growing technological presence of China in Southeast Asia until 2021. By using qualitative methods, the author argues that the DSR has allowed Beijing to overcome the limitations of the original strategy, BRI, and strengthen its influence in the field of information and communication technologies, particularly fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications. Furthermore, the paper examines Vietnam's digital development and digital diplomacy and how the Vietnamese government has responded to DSR projects. In light of both the potential threats and economic benefits that the DSR has brought to Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries, in the last section, the policy implications for cooperation are discussed.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.125-157
• /
• 2019

It has been widely argued that Area Studies is in a critical condition especially in Australia, Europe and the US. However, in the Southeast Asian region, most especially Indonesia, we are witnessing the rise of Area Studies programs with the establishment of several such programs both in research institutions and universities. In this paper, I will discuss a few examples of Area Studies research on the emerging diasporic connections in Southeast Asia and reflect on the constitution of ethnic networks as "sites" where transnational identities are forged beyond state boundaries. Indeed, transnational movements of people have occurred and continue to happen due to particular events like wars and political turmoil, as well as for economic reasons. Today, we find many diasporic groups, including minorities, in the border areas of Southeast Asian countries and historically, minorities have been known for their movements in mainland Southeast Asia. If previously, the diasporic connections, especially with the homeland, had been very limited or even non-existent, today such connections have emerged across national boundaries. On top of this, economic and social networkings are equally on the rise both within and at transnational levels. It is, therefore, important to discuss the identity of diasporic groups and transnational networkings in the cases of two border areas in Southeast Asia.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.7-40
• /
• 2019

The essay reflects on the work of Adrian Lapian (1929-2011), an Indonesian scholar of archipelagic/maritime Southeast Asia and its "sea people-sea pirates-sea kings." The essay suggests that Lapian's writing mirrors navigation at sea, and the constant re-orientation and ever-changing, multiple points of view that are part of it. This is contrasted to Foucault's "panopticism" and academic desire for discipline. Taking cue from Lapian's writing and from the present author's experience of seafaring, the essay envisions Southeast Asian studies as a fluid, precarious, disorienting, even nauseating multiplicity of experiences, dialogues, and moving, unstable, and uncertain points of view; a style of learning that is less (neo)colonial, more humble, and closer to experiences in the region, than super-scholarship that imposes universalizing, panoptic standards, theories and methods (typically self-styled as "new") that reduce the particular into a specimen of the general, a cell in the Panopticon. The essay concludes with reflections on certain learning initiatives/traditions at the National University of Singapore, including seafaring voyages-experiences, encounters, and conversations that make students and scholars alike to move and see differently, to be touched, blown away, rocked, swayed, disoriented, swallowed, transformed, and feel anew their places, roots, bonds, distances, fears, blindness, powerlessness.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.35-61
• /
• 2018

This paper explores the influence of Arab culture on the culture of Bugis-Makassar, the two major ethnic groups in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, particularly after their Islamization in the early 17^th century. The paper argues that since then, the on-going process of Islamization in the region has also brought a continuous flow of ideas and cultural practices from Mecca to Indonesia by means of the hajj pilgrims, Arab traders, and the establishment of Islamic educational institutions that emphasized the teaching and use of Arabic language in education. These factors, among others, have facilitated a cultural inflow which enabled cultural practices borne of West Asia (Middle East) to be integrated into local customs and beliefs. The paper particularly depicts the most observable forms of Arabic cultural integration, acculturation, and assimilation into the Bugis-Makassar culture such as the use of Arabic in Islamic schools and religious sermons; the Arab-style dressing by religious scholars, teachers, and students; the wearing of the hijab (head cover) by women; and the change of people's names from local into Arabic. By utilizing the historical and anthropological approach, this paper investigates this dynamic process of adaptation and integration of a foreign culture that first came through the Islamization of a local culture, exploring the role of an Islamic missionary and educational institutions in mediating and maintaining such cultural integration processes.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.41-70
• /
• 2019

As a response to Peter Jackson's call for a Southeast Asian Area Studies beyond Anglo-America, this paper argues that the achievement of this salient objective hinges on an understanding of the idea of positionality and what it entails. Drawing from reflections from Filipino scholars, positionality can be understood not merely as one's determination through geographic location or self-knowledge of one's condition within the politics of knowledge production; rather, it is the power and opportunity to claim a place from which one understands reality in one's own terms, and the capacity to effect influence within her intellectual domain. In redefining positionality as such, one realizes that crucial to establishing Southeast Asian Area studies beyond Anglo-America is acknowledging the importance of the vernacular in the production and circulation of knowledge, as well as the constant danger of English as the global lingua franca, established in the guise of an advocacy that resolves unevenness by providing equal opportunity for all intellectuals to gain "global prominence." This paper argues that, instead of trying to eradicate unevenness, one can acknowledge it as the condition of being located in a place and as a privileged position to think and create beyond the shadow of Anglo-American theory.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.25-57
• /
• 2019

The paper addresses Erik Cohen's pioneering work on tourism in Thailand, specifically his publications on the relations between Thai women and foreign (farang) men in tourist-oriented encounters. Of sociological-anthropological interest is his conceptualization of these relations as "open-ended prostitution as a skilful game of luck" based on his study of a Bangkok soi (lane) in 1981-1984, and his exploration of Thai culture in terms of ambiguity and contradiction. On the basis of recent ethnographic research in the northern Thai tourist hub of Chiang Mai and wide-ranging observations on tourism development in Thailand, we examine continuity and change in these male-female engagements since Cohen's research, especially in the context of the increasing availability of such electronic agencies as social media, messaging, video chat, and internet dating. Whereas Cohen's concept of ambiguity and illusion has tended to disappear from physical spaces, it seems to have resurfaced in virtual space. The complexities of host-guest relations, and particularly the interactions both within the variegated category of "guests" themselves and then between their "hostesses" are explored in terms of sites of tourism-oriented encounters in both physical and virtual space so as to deconstruct these oppositional categories which have been formative in studies of tourism.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.59-83
• /
• 2019

The Chinese Belt Road initiatives in the Southeast Asian countries marked a new chapter in the development of China political influence on this region. This article looks at the initiative from the cultural dimension and aims to place its narrative as the entry point to understand the use of identity politics in Asian countries that target the Chinese diaspora. This topic relates to the primordial sentiments of Southeast Asian nations amid massive Chinese investment in the region. The issue of Chinese investments under the Belt Road Initiative corridor has a relationship with the formation of anti-Chinese discourse and anti-communist in some Southeast Asian countries. We took the cases of Indonesian and Malaysian elections to observe the use of identity politics and anti-Chinese political discourse in Southeast Asia. In both cases, a common issue emerged, that of the strengthening both Islamic and indigenous sensibilities. The establishment of ASEAN during the Cold War may be seen then as an anti-thesis to emerging Chinese power. However, anti-Chinese and anti-communism sentiments were not enough to unite the forces of the nations of Southeast Asia. We have concluded that brotherhood, mutual prosperity, and anti-neo-colonialism are yet to be fostered completely to make a distinct ASEAN identity.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.181-203
• /
• 2023

Cultures often adopt the good versus evil dichotomy within their narratives of religious texts, aural anecdotes, and cultural mythologies. The Ramayana narrates a divine story that transcends time of the battle between the forces of good and evil, between Prince Rama and Ravana. Numerously adapted through time, the Ramayana is today told through moving visuals and has been adapted by Mani Ratnam through Raavanan (2010). Raavanan is adapted to the premise of hero versus villain using the good versus evil premise as Dev Prakash (Rama) searches to rescue his wife Raagini (Sita), who is abducted by Veeraiya (Ravana). The film, however, departs from the Ramayana as Raavanan is told through the perspective of Veeraiya. In the film, Veeraiya is portrayed as a flawed anti-hero who battles against injustice instead of being the antagonist. He seeks revenge for his sister and stands up against the oppression of his tribe. In this battle, he questions ideological understandings of justice and morality that have been conventionally interpellated within society. This paper discusses how Mani Ratnam, through the film Raavanan, contests hegemony, ideology, and class differences within modern cinema and society alongside the more significant question surrounding India's sociocultural conditions.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.229-254
• /
• 2023

This study observes the language attitude and maintenance of the border community in Telok Melano, Lundu (Sarawak, Malaysia) and Desa Temajuk, Sambas (West Kalimantan, Indonesia). The main objective of this study is to study the language attitudes of two cross-border community who shares the socio-cultural, language, and economic realms. The research data is collected qualitatively through conversation recordings, face-to-face interviews, and participant observations. In this preliminary study, twelve informants (six from Telok Melano and six from Desa Temajuk) were chosen based on the quota sampling method. The questions for the interview were set according to three characteristics of language choice proposed by Garvin and Mathiot (1968), namely language loyalty, language pride, and the awareness of norms. The result of this study indicates that language loyalty, language pride, and awareness of the norms towards the speakers' mother tongue and national language are relatively high. In terms of identity maintenance issues, this study found that the community in Telok Melano (Sarawak), originally identify themselves as "Sambas Malays," shifted to "Sarawak Malays" after the formation of Malaysia in 1963. This preliminary study serves as a basis for further research particularly on the complexity of issues concerned with the border communities in the Southwest of Sarawak.