"Outsider" status and economic success in Suharto's Indonesia

I was struck recently [1998] by an exchange I witnessed in a Canberra restaurant, when an Indonesian visitor (Dede Oetomo) was explaining his background as a "Chinese" Indonesian, albeit with quite a few Javanese or Balinese ancestors from the eighteenth and nineteenth century on the mother's side. My Filipino colleague (Rey Ileto) noted with some surprise -- "in the Philippines you would simply be a Filipino; in Indonesia I guess I would be a Chinese." This was rather troubling to this important Filipino intellectual, interpreter of Philippine identity & son of a prominent Philippine general. How is it that a substantial minority of urban Indonesian culture and language, and mixed ethnic background, is considered Cina and somehow alien in Indonesia, where the analogous group in Thailand or the Philippines is considered simply Thai or Filipino? And how is it possible that passions could be so strong around this single word that otherwise law-abiding Indonesian citizens should feel no shame in reviling, robbing, killing and raping their fellow-countrymen because of it? In other words, why has this category been constructed by many Indonesians to be outside their moral and political community, at least at times of social stress and breakdown? Perhaps most puzzling, why is it that the most terrifying outburst of anti-Chinese hostility since 1947, and potentially since 1740, should occur in 1998, a time when the whole Sino-Indonesian community is more culturally integrated into the mainstream than at any time in the past? (First two paragraphs of paper)

Approaching "Asia" from the southeast : does the crisis make a difference?

Asian Studies Institute inaugural lectur

Approaching "Asia" from the southeast : does the crisis make a difference?

Asian Studies Institute inaugural lectur

Chinese on the Mining Frontier in Southeast Asia

The influx of Chinese into Malaysia in particular and �Central Southeast Asia� more generally is often popularly attributed to colonial rule, as if the pluralism they exemplified were not �natural� to the region. In reality, the Peninsula has always been highly plural, and the advance of the Chinese mining frontier within it preceded the British.1 This essay documents some of the means by which Chinese mining advanced the economic frontiers in Southeast Asia ahead of European capital. Tin, being the most obvious example, takes center stage in this stor

On the Importance of Autobiography

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The Identity of "Sumatra" in History

Any endeavours such as the 1981 Conference on 'North Sumatra', and the present book, raise questions about the most fruitful and appropriate boundaries for scholarly enquiry. Although two of my own books (1969; 1979) are premised on a quite different definition of 'North Sumatra' - including Aceh but excluding Tapanuli - I would be the first to concede that the Hamburg Conference did show the value of looking at the present (since 1956) province of North Sumatra as a distinct unit. Behind this question of definition, however, there lies an older and deeper question, whether Sumatra as a whole should be distinguished as a field of enquiry

Religious pluralism as an Asian tradition

Although Christianity was born as a movement apart from the state and persecuted by it, once adopted as the religion of the Roman Empire in 312 AD it quickly became a state orthodoxy, almost coterminous with the fortunes of states. The very concept of an enforceable orthodoxy was born with the Council of Nicea, since there was a mighty state that could outlaw schism as politically divisive and require the theologians to resolve any differences that became politically significant. The concept of heresy was born at a time when states could equate it with subversion, so that first Nestorians and Monophysites, and later Albigensians and Cathars, could be crushed by force except insofar as they managed to establish states of their own that could defend them. Challenges to the religious establishment were seen as challenges also to the state. Longlasting schism, or religious diversity, could only occur when different states supported different sides of the debate. Even after the Roman Empire in the West dissolved before northern invaders, in the eastern Mediterranean it remained closely intertwined with the fortunes of the church, so that the split between Catholic and Orthodox became largely coterminous with that which had occurred within the old Roman Empire. The first world power, Hapsburg Spain, expanded into the Americas in a similar spirit that identified loyalty to Spain with adherence to Catholicism