The Rise of China and the Transformation of Southeast Asia - A preliminary study (Japanese)

The economic rise of China will bring major change to the balance of power both globally and within the region. How will Southeast Asian countries address this seismic change? Broadly, these countries are pursuing two approaches. The first is to engage China to create common norms and rules multilaterally and the second is to balance the rising China with other powers to maintain their freedom of action as much as possible and ensure their interests are not adversely affected by China's rise and the change in the regional order. This paper examines these two approaches - politics of integration and balance-of-power politics - by looking at ASEAN and foreign policies of Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar.

The Rise of New Urban Middle Classes in Southeast Asia: What is its national and regional significance?

Middle classes in East Asia are a product of regional economic development which has taken place in waves under an American informal empire, over half a century, first in Japan, then in NIEs, then in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines and now in China. They are a product of developmental states and their politics of economic growth. Their life styles have been shaped in complex ways by their appropriation of things American, Japanese, Chinese, Islamic, and others. Though created in one generation, they nationally occupy different social, political and cultural positions: Thai middle classes are coherent socially, hegemonic culturally and intellectually and ascendant politically; their counterparts in Malaysia and Indonesia are socially divided, dependent on the state, and unable to shape politics in any significant way; and in the Philippines, middle classes are socially coherent, less dependent on the state, culturally ascendant, but politically weak. Yet there is no question that new urban middle classes are there as important forces in all these countries. Their emergence as social and cultural formation is significant for the East Asian region making in three respects. First, being a product of financial globalization and regionalization of production, they have vital stakes in their countries remaining open for those forces. Second, they provide regional markets for MNCs. Whether in fashion, life style, music, or other businesses, firms successful in capturing regional markets thrive. The novelty of the familiar is the key to capturing regional markets or their segments. And third, regional middle class markets open up the possibility for the construction of market-mediated national and regional cultural identities. What remains to be seen is who produces what to further integrate the region economically and to construct an Asian identity for economic and political gains.

Saminism reinterpreted : a study of rakjat radicalism in Java

This paper will attempt to interprete and analyse Saminism in Javanese cultural terms as the first step to analyse the rise of rakjat radicalism in Java which formed the popular basis of early Indonesian nationalism in the 1910s and the 1920s.Saminism was a teaching of esoteric knowledge which was first preached by Soerontiko Samin at the turn of the century in Blora and then spread in the mountaneous areas of middle and east Java in the 1910s.It has been regarded as a variant of Javanese abangan tradition or as a remnant of archaic Hindu-Javanese tradition, but in terms of highly Power (kasekten) oriented Javanese cultural tradition it was in effect an effort on the side of the gogol, the upper strata of the village community, to dissociate themselves from the socio-political order dominated by the Dutch and the prijajji and to prepare themselves as kaula of the coming ratu kembar (the twin just kings) to establish the realm of tata tentrem karta rahardja (order-tranquility-prosperity-welfare).In this perspective, the whole movement of Saminists ranging from chanting the Saminist formula to rejecting to pay taxes and perform corvee labour and using ngoko, low-Javanese, to the prijaji can be interpreted as a sign of their Power (kasekten) and their denunciation of the legitimacy of the established Dutch-prijaji order

Soerakarta 1919 : Satria, Islamic Pradjoerit, and Peasants

During the early months of 1919, the Soerakarta branch (afdeeling) of Insulinde carried out propaganda activities for the Indies nationalism and reformist Islam in the rural areas of Soerakarta Principality.Peasants were organized into the krings (circles) and the membership of Insulinde in rural Soerakarta reached more that ten thousands within a few months.This highly succesful peasant mobilization by the Insulinde, however, simultaneously generated successive peasant protest actions in which they refused to perform corvee labor for the tobacco plantations and demanded their wage increase.In this paper, I propose to describe and analyze the process of peasant mobilization and to answer why the nationalist mobilization of peasants resulted, though not intended, in generating peasant protest against the plantations.The major points made in this paper are two-fold.First, the afdeeling leadership under Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo and Hadji Mohammad Misbach did not intend to orgaize peasant protest actions against the plantations.They propagated the ideas of the Indies nationalism and Islamic reformism and acted on the ideas of genuine satria and Islamic pradjoerit (soldier) at the propanda rallies.But the kring leaders translated their messages into much more eonomic demands and recruited the peasants into the Insulinde krings while promisingthe mitigation of corvee labor and their wage increase.There-fore, it was investment for the peasants to pay the entrance fee and to join the Insulinde.Once they joined the Insulinde, they pressed kring leaders for quick realization of their promises.Thus kring leaders led the peasants to protest actions and the afdeeling leaders had no way but to approve their actions to maintain their credibility as genuine satria and Islamic pradjoerit.Second, therefore, the issues involved in the peasant protest actions under the banner of Insulinde were similar in content with those in the “traditional” peasant protest movements without any background of nationalist politics.What was new with the peasant protest actions led by the Insulinde was that the prapat, the traditional institutional device for conflict resolution in Java, did not work.The kring leaders boycotted the prapat and instead held Insulinde progapanda rallies.The prapat was the political drama to legitimize the public authority in which the state oficials played the pivotal role as the arbitrator of the conflicting private interests.The propaganda rallies were the political drama of delegitimizing the public authority, in which Indies nationalists and Islamic reformists occupied the pivotal position and the public authority was deprived of its higher moral quality by their appeals to the Truth contained in al Koran.Thus the administration had no way but to resort to arrest afdeeling-and kring-leaders in order to restore the public authority, for the arrests of afdeeling-and kring-leaders meant the disappearance of Insuli de proraganda rallies