Sacred spaces of Karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the Thailand-Burma border

"In this article, I demonstrate that the Karen National Union (KNU) was able to manipulate and politicise humanitarian aid in the Thailand-Burma borderland. I contend that in the context of the civil war in eastern Burma, Protestant Christianity provides a crucial vehicle for political mobilisation. The article shows that refugee camps in the Thai borderland become centres of proselytisation, and that Protestant evangelical and missionary networks open up passages across the Thai-Burmese border. The article thus considers a case where a homeland is constructed in the liminal space between two nations. Illegal emergency aid that doubles as missionary project reinforces the image of a helpless victim being vandalized by evil Burmese army." (author's abstract)"Dieser Artikel zeigt auf, wie es der Karen National Union (KNU) gelungen ist, die humanitäre Hilfe im Grenzgebiet zwischen Thailand und Burma für eigene Ziele zu manipulieren und zu politisieren. Der Autor argumentiert, dass das protestantische Christentum ein entscheidendes Vehikel zur politischen Mobilisierung im Kontext des Bürgerkriegs in Ost-Burma darstellt. Der Artikel zeigt, dass die Flüchtlingslager im thailändischen Grenzgebiet als Zentren der Missionierung dienen und dass die protestantisch-evangelikalen und missionarischen Netzwerke territoriale Korridore durch die thailändisch-burmesische Grenze öffnen. Wir sehen hier ein Fallbeispiel, wie eine imaginierte Nation in der Grenzerfahrung zweier Nationen konstruiert wird. Soforthilfe, die mit protestantischer Mission doppelt, verstärkt das Bild hilfloser Opfer, die von der burmesischen Armee vandalisiert werden." (Autorenreferat

Gender, Tabligh, and the "Docile Agent": The Politics of Faith and Embodiment among the Tablīghī Jamā’ah

In this article, I hope to explore some aspects of the complexity of the subject. Engagement in the Tablighi movement is neither a mere act of emancipation nor the complete subordination of women's agency to the rule of men.1 I suggest that the answer to the attraction of the movement to women lies between these two lines. I propose that the women who choose to ally themselves with the movement are prepared to submit themselves to the rules of the gender ideology in return for the extended agency that women receive as active members of the movement's ideology and activities.DOI: 10.15408/sdi.v16i1.49

Konfessionelle Koexistenz in Südthailand:Ritueller Austausch, Transformation und die Reproduktion des Sozialen in Südthailand

In Südthailand leben Muslime und Buddhisten seit der Ayuthhaya-Periode in engen nachbarschaftlichen Beziehungen, in denen lokale Mechanismen der Konfliktvermeidung entwickelt werden, die eine friedvolle Koexistenz ermöglichen. Vor dem Hintergrund gewalttätiger Konflikte in Südthailand wird die lokale Geschichte der konfessionellen Beziehungen Südthailands, ihre Vergleichbarkeit und Transformation sowie ihre Einlagerung in Prozesse nationaler Integration und kultureller Globalisierung in einer Fallstudie exemplarisch untersucht. Besonders interessant ist die Frage der Vitalität bzw. Auflösung der geteilten kosmologischen Werte und Normen

BOOK REVIEW : CLASS, CULTURE AND SPACE: THE CONSTRUCTION AND SHAPING OF COMMUNAL SPACE IN SOUTH THAILAND

Compared with other regions of Thailand, South Thailand has been a somewhat neglected center of research for many decades. Thomas Fraser's classic ethnographic study of the fishing village known as Rusembilan and Louis Golomb's work on ethnicity in the region, supplemented by some political science investigations by Ladd Thomas, Astri Suhrke and others, were conducted in the 1960s and 70s. In the 1980s Muslim scholars in Thailand including Surin Pitsuwan, Arong Suthasasna, Hasan Madmarn, and Chaiwat Satha-Anand contributed major studies that placed the Malay Muslims of South Thailand in their political, religious and cultural contexts. Thai anthropologist Chavivun Prachuabmoh developed models for understanding gender and ethnicity among Malay Muslims, while Uthai Dulyasakem focused on educational institutions in the region. Studies lagged on South Thailand, however, in comparison with those on Central, North, and Northeast Thailand.

The Game of Negotiations: Ordering Issues and Implementing Agreements

We study a two-issue bargaining situation in which the surplus of one issue is public information, while that of the other issue is private information to one of the parties. Bargaining is by alternating offers under common time-discounting. The bargaining agenda is determined endogenously since players are free to offer on any number of outstanding issues. Offers must, however, be accepted or rejected in their entirety. Once an offer has been accepted it is not renegotiable. We study this game under two alternative rules for implementing agreements. In the first, partial agreements are implemented as they are reached, in the alternative setting implementation is joint, so that even if an offer on one issue is accepted consumption of this surplus is nevertheless delayed until the second issue is also settled. We show that the order in which issues are bargained in equilibrium is determined by three things: the implementation rule, the type of the informed player and the initial beliefs of the uninformed player. Specifically, an issue-by-issue bargaining agenda arises only when a low-valuation informed player faces an opponent who believes him to be likely a high-valuation type. In contrast to suggestions in the negotiation practitioner literature, such initial agenda offers always involve concessions (much smaller allocations to the informed player than in a bargain without agenda offers.) We also show that it is the implementation rule which determines which issue leads in the agenda. When implementation takes place as agreements are reached, then the issue of known size is negotiated first. If agreements are implemented only after all issues are settled, then, if order is relevant at all, large issues are settled first. All parties prefer the former rules of implementation to the latter.

Mittelschichten in Südostasien: gedankliche Konstruktion oder empirische Wirklichkeit

In der vorhandenen Forschungsliteratur über die Mittelschichten in Südostasien wird entweder von einer demokratisch-politischen Interessenhaltung oder einer reinen Konsumorientierung und "Yuppie-Mentalität" bei den Mittelschichten ausgegangen. In Abgrenzung zu dieser eher "gedanklichen Konstruktion" trägt der Autor im folgenden einige empirische Beobachtungen zur Veränderung von Mittelschichten im Kontext von Globalisierungsprozessen am Beispiel Südthailands vor. Er beschreibt insbesondere die soziokulturelle Integration zwischen den Mittelschichtsegmenten der chinesischen, thailändischen und malaiischen Bevölkerung. Gegenüber den klassischen Kriterien wie Bildung und Einkommen stellt er eine stärkere Bedeutung der Lebensstile im öffentlichen Raum und die Herausbildung neuer Identitäten fest. (ICI