• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.167-186
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• 2021

The Grand Stupa is mentioned in historical text as 'Rajakudakan', which means a royal building with a multitiered superstructure. This Grand Stupa is the principal construction of Wat Chedi Luang, and marks the center of the Chiang Mai City Plan. This study argues that the Grand Stupa was built in 1391 during Phaya Saen Mueang Ma's reign, possibly inspired by the construction of Ku Phaya in Bagan. Thereafter, in 1545, the Grand Stupa's superstructure collapsed after the great earthquake, resulted in the irreparable damage since then. Therefore, a survey using a 3D laser scanner is conducted to collect the most precise data on the current condition of the Grand Stupa, yielding an assumption of its reconstruction. Other simultaneous stupas or those that show a close architectural relationship (e.g. stupas in Wat Chiang Man and Wat Lok Moli and the stupa of King Tilokaraj in Wat Chet Yot in Chiang Mai) are also employed as research frameworks for the reconstruction. As a result, the architectural research on the Grands Stupa, compared with simultaneous stupas, yields a fruitful argument that the pre-collapse superstructure form of the Grand Stupa marks the most architectural similarity to the stupa of Wat Chiang Man.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.233-249
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• 2022

Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) is an Islamic social movement that struggles to change the existing political system to the Islamic system. HT argues that all problems in the Muslim world are rooted in adopting secular thought and ideology and the separation between Islam and the state. Hence, HT works to persuade Muslims to abandon that way of life and only apply Islam as the country's only ideology and constitution. HT has spread this narrative since it started in 1953 in Jordan. With this ideological and political attitude, many countries consider HT a threat to their political and community life, suppressing this movement by arresting members and banning the group to reduce or end HT activities in these countries. The Indonesian government has also carried out this repressive policy to limit the influence of Indonesian HTI since 2017. This paper aims to discuss the strategy of Hizb ut-Tahrir to continue its political activities Indonesia after being dissolved by the Indonesian government in 2017. This article used content analysis method to interpret the data collected from interview and documents from Hizb ut-Tahrir. Responding to state repression, HTI sought other methods of action by changing the place of resistance or activities, and by changing its identity.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.27-59
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• 2022

During the past two decades, the Southeast Asian region has experienced a range of major crises. Service industries such as tourism and the marginal and migrant laborers who work in them have usually been at the sharp end of these testing events, from natural and environmental disasters, epidemics and pandemics, global financial slumps, terrorism, and political conflict. The latest challenge is the "Novel Coronavirus" (Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. It has already had serious consequences for Southeast Asia and its tourism development and these will continue for the foreseeable future. Since the SARS epidemic of 2002-2004, Southeast Asian economies have become integrated increasingly into those of East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong). This paper examines one of the most significant current crises, Covid-19, and its consequences for Southeast Asia, its tourism industry, and its workers, comparing experiences across the region, and the issues raised by the over-dependence of some countries on East Asia. In research on crises, the main focus has been on dramatic, unpredictable natural disasters, and human-generated global economic downturns. Not so much attention has been devoted to disease and contagion, which has both natural and socio-cultural dimensions in origins and effects, and which, in the case of Covid-19, evoke a pre-crisis period of normality, a liminal transition or "meantime" and a post-crisis "new normality." The transition is not straightforward; in many countries, it operates as a set of serial lockdowns and restrictions, and to predict an uncertain future remains difficult.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.23-55
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• 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
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.57-90
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• 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
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.125-157
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• 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
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.7-40
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• 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
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.35-61
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• 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
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.41-70
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• 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
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.25-57
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• 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.