• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.251-268
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• 2022

Over the last few decades, global trade activities showed a significant increase, resulting in a rise of the wider global economic growth. The achievement is partly due to the more integrated global trade system under global trade regime such as World Trade Organization (WTO) that standardized the practice of global trade. On the other hand, it could also be seen that regional trade negotiation became more important part of global trade activity. The trade negotiation itself was pushed and tailored by regional perspective, which indigenized trade agreement. This research aims to analyze the indigenization of ASEAN's trade negotiation model. How has the current trade negotiation model within the region represented indigenous needs and aspirations? This study also offers to revisit the conceptual framework in identifying the trade negotiation model to measure the indigeneity of Southeast Asian automotive industry's policy. This research concludes by explaining the case studies which measure the effect of indigenization to the practice of trade agreement in the region.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.269-303
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• 2022

Since the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967, the main objective of creating a "prosperous and peaceful community of Southeast Asian Nations" through regional integration remains slow. While the aims and purposes of the ASEAN include accelerating, promoting active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters concerning culture and cultural development, the desired ASEAN Integration through culture is still in question. As a multicultural region, the richness and diversity of cultures constitute both prospects and challenges. This paper discusses 1) the concept of integration vis-a-vis the ASEAN; 2) the ASEAN's goals, policies, and initiatives, concerning culture as stipulated in the key documents of ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community-Culture and Arts sector; and 3) the ASEAN identity and community vis-a-vis culture. In the end, this paper proposes a framework on the ASEAN integration through culture in the context of a single identity amidst cultural diversity.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.149-173
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• 2022

Vaccine nationalism and its implications to vaccine supply were a huge concern globally when COVID-19 vaccines first became available in 2021. At the time, vaccine supply was limited and it was difficult for many countries around the world to get adequate supply of the COVID-19 vaccine to inoculate their people. At its most benign, vaccine nationalism delayed the access of poorer countries to vaccines that are widely considered as the long-term solution to the COVID-19 pandemic. Poorer countries needed to resort to diplomacy to wrangle early access to vaccine supply from vaccine-producing countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and others. In particular, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte leveraged his country's Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States and the need for Filipino nurses by countries like the United Kingdom and Germany to secure early access to COVID-19 vaccines. It all seems trivial now (in 2022) because of better global vaccine supply, but in 2021 when countries scrambled for access to scarce COVID-19 vaccines, Rodrigo Duterte leveraged the Philippines' assets to gain early access to vaccine supply.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.177-206
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• 2022

At different times in the 19^th century, the Straits Settlements and Cochinchina were both colonies that the British and the French captured the earliest in their process of invasion of Malaya and Vietnam, respectively. This study examines the transitional stage from the traditional school system to colonial school system in the Straits Settlements and Cochinchina. This could also be considered an experimental stage for building later education systems in their expanded colonies, namely British Malaya and French Indochina, from the closing decades of the 19^th century to the middle of the 20^th century. This study, exploiting various sources and applying the comparative approach, identifies the factors that affected the different attitudes and choices of policy towards traditional education models of indigenous communities (the Malays and Vietnamese) pursued by the British in the Straits Settlements and the French in Cochinchina.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.271-303
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• 2023

In 1991, Malaysia, under the leadership of then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, launched an ambitious 30-year national development program known as Vision 2020. The goal of this program was to transform Malaysia into a First World developed nation by the year 2020. One of the aspirations of the program was to create a psychologically liberated, secure, ethical, and mature democratic society. Vision 2020 is a failure and Malaysia is still not a mature democracy. This article identifies four main areas that make up a flawed democracy practiced in Malaysia, and shows how they work against the country's aspirations to become a developed nation. The electoral system is rigged to help the incumbent remain in power. The widespread practices of money politics have become a curse to the country. The press and media organizations are restricted. Civil society activities are suppressed. As a result of these issues, Malaysia will not be able to achieve the status of a developed nation, lacking democratic accountability and inclusive institutions.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.131-152
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• 2023

In analyzing the Chinese diaspora, this paper explores losses that are encountered within the family in the nation. It argues that increased social and spatial mobilities that contribute to losses can be reconfigured through the productive lens of supermobility, as Laurence J. C. Ma conceptualizes it. Supermobile identities are significant avenues to consider the way that losses traditionally associated with migration and assimilation are revisited in view of new flows of migration and identification. In examining K. H. Lim's debut novel Written in Black (2014), this study addresses pathways from debilitating losses to productive losses journeyed by the family from the child's perspective. It offers a critical analysis of the Anglophone Bruneian novel in terms of its exclusive portrayal of an ethnic Chinese family. Departing from a fixed notion of home as cultural and physical rootedness, it explores flexible identities that are tied to shifting concepts of belonging. Rather than a magnification of social and spatial losses, the analysis highlights the way that the literary imagination of ethnic Chinese in Brunei Darussalam accommodates progressive ideas of the agency and advancement of the Chinese diaspora as a supermobile community.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.155-185
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• 2023

This paper aims to identify the shifts of masculine domination, illuminating Vietnamese men and women's actual position in society through surveying the mixed and hybrid characteristics described in the feminist texts in the early twentieth century. This paper concentrates on the feminist writings of the two exceptionally male intellectuals Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh (1882-1936) and Phan Khôi (1887-1959). in order to implement these goals, the paper first examines the popular phenomenon of ventriloquism among Vietnamese male intellectuals, whose dominant attitudes may still be unveiled in feminist texts. Secondly, the paper focuses on surveys of men's direct discourse in constructing the model of women's liberation. From these two contents, this paper answers the following questions: Why have Vietnamese men become feminists? What were the causes, purposes, and effects of this phenomenon? To look at the nature of Vietnamese feminism, this paper will show the shifts of masculine domination in Vietnam as another form of protecting men's privileges. All analyses in this study will ground discussion on the economic, political, and social contexts and conditions of Vietnam in the early twentieth century.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.187-213
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• 2023

As migrants develop businesses abroad, entrepreneurship needs specific strategies due to some barriers when establishing and doing businesses. This paper examines the kinds of problems that have been faced in Indonesian migrant entrepreneurships in Taiwan and how the entrepreneurs cope with the difficulties. They use structural and cultural strategies for survival, seize the opportunities for self-development, and develop future careers. Research result shows that the limitations of Indonesian entrepreneurships in Taiwan are related to institutional issues, migrant status, business regulations, resource-providing institutions, language barriers, competition among migrants and locals, and capital. Hence, migrant entrepreneurs must conduct strategic actions to continue their businesses by developing innovations to grow and survive. Some measures include changing from offline to online marketing especially when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, product diversification using migrants and local people's assistance and networks, and setting competitive prices. This paper is based on qualitative research. The data were obtained through interviews in East Java-Indonesia and in Taiwan in 2022. The data were analysed using the descriptive analysis with sociological perspectives.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.215-244
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• 2023

This study analyzes the effect of macroeconomic indicators such as foreign direct investment (FDI), domestic investment, trade, inflation, unemployment, population, and governance indicators on economic growth and points out the GDP growth rate in 2002- 2019 among ASEAN countries. Data were compiled from the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and the World Bank, and the effect of variables on GDP was predicted using the pooled ordinary least squares (POLS), fixed effects model (FEM), and random effects model (REM) methods. As a measure of growth, the GDP growth rate has been taken; FDI and domestic investment, trade, inflation, and governance indicators are positively connected and have an influence on economic growth in these ASEAN countries; domestic investment, population, and unemployment have a negative relationship to economic growth. The macroeconomic indicators and institutional stability of the nation have an effect on its economic growth. Comprehensive institutional stability and well-laid macroeconomic policies are required for growth to materialize.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.245-270
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• 2023

Many publications of ecocritical research papers and translations of ecocriticism occur in Vietnam in recent years. This paper examines ecocritical scholarly writing in Vietnam, understanding how it corresponds to-reflects and attends to-contemporary Vietnamese society and politics. Specifically, this paper contextualizes Vietnamese ecocriticism in contemporary social and political concerns-embodied in journalistic and administrative documents-about the modernity-oriented postcolonial nation-building of Vietnam. In revealing critiques of political and social degenerations implied in ecocritical writings in Vietnam, this paper suggests that the emergence of ecocriticism in present-day Vietnam indicates a recent "political turn." More importantly, such emergence reflects and engages with the continuing Marxist perspective of literature as an instrument for social criticism and cultural revolution in Vietnam. Vietnamese ecocritics bear the mission of prophets of the time, public educators, and soul engineers, writing is an act of engaging with and influencing reality. Writing (literary and scholarly) still forms an idealized ideological instrument in the struggles for national homogeneity and sovereignty and social democracy in present-day Vietnam.