The Dynamics of Unity and Diversity in Southeast Asia: Lessons Learned?

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The Dynamics of Unity and Diversity in Southeast
Asia Lessons Learned?
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Borders in Southeast Asia by the Early 19th
Century

• The Mainland and the Island Areas

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Bhinekka Tunggal Ika Out of Many, One

• History of the region has been conceptualized by
  scholars and politicians in linear fashion,
  moving from many disparate groups into a unity
• Precolonial (including early modern) histories
  thus perceived as divided/divisive (primitive),
  and colonial and modern periods as
  united/unifying (progressive)
• This form of structuring ideas of Southeast Asia
  has been determined by scholars influenced by the
  relative wealth of materials from the colonial
  and modern nation state archives
• Evidence suggests that this heuristic division
  masks the reality of an oscillation between unity
  (state-sponsored programs) and diversity (local
  responses) from the past to the present

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Rescuing History from the Nation-State

• Prasenjit Duaras call (1997) to rescue history
  from the nation-state focused on China, arguing
  that China was more than the dynasties,
  emphasis on regions
• Vietnam often thought of as the oldest and most
  stable state in Southeast Asian history
  historians continue to talk of the thousand
  years under the Chinese, followed by the long
  history of Vietnamese independent regimes
• Increasing studies on the Chams of central and
  southern Vietnam, and on the uplands in northern
  Vietnam expose the contested spaces and the
  presence of Vietnams
• Transnational links of Vietnam and littoral
  societies shown in new research using a sea
  perspective, undermining state vision of unity,
  continuity, and history as determined by the land

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VIETNAM
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Sea Perspective on Vietnam

• Li Tana The Eighteenth Century Mekong Delta and
  its World of Water Frontier. In Nhung Tuyet Tran
  and Anthony Reid, eds. Viet Nam Borderless
  Histories. Madison University of Wisconsin
  Press, 2006.
• Wheeler, Charles. Rethinking the Sea in
  Vietnamese History Littoral Society in the
  Integration of Thaun-Quang, Seventeenth-Eighteenth
  Centuries. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
  37, 1(2006)123-55

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Adopting Local Perspectives

• Island Southeast Asia characterized by
  nation-states that had origins in colonial
  entities whereas, mainland Southeast Asia had
  kingdoms by early twentieth century that had
  distinct boundaries prior to colonialism
• The land- and seascape of island Southeast Asia
  and the persistence of many and diverse
  communities spawned various theories of the
  nature of the state
• Mainland Southeast Asian states tend to follow a
  linear historical discussion How did we get to
  where we are?
• All of Southeast Asia shared ideas of authority
  flowing from a source of spiritual strength
  rulers had most power/authority while local
  leaders had less

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Authority/Power in Southeast Asia

• Women of Prowess
• Shakti (Hindu) Java, Sumatra
• Pon (Buddhist) with local variations Theravada
  Buddhist countries
• Barakka or Berkat (Islamic) archipelago
• Bertuah (Malay) archipelago
• Mana Polynesian
• Both diversity and unity in Southeast Asia
  revolve around these people of prowess

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Mandala Polity

• Mandala (O.W. Wolters) idea of polities under
  man of prowess, whose authority/influence is
  likened to the beam of an upturned lamp most
  intense in the center, gradually weakens toward
  the periphery permeable frontiers dynamism of
  peripheries because of overlap with other mandala
  polities
• Foreign ideas fragmented into local cultural
  statements in process called localization
• Idea continues into present at both national
  (unity) and local (diversity) levels in
  political, religious, business, etc., leaders

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Galactic and Solar Polities

• Galactic polity (S. Tambiah) likened to a galaxy
  with a sun that holds a number of planets within
  its orbit, with the gravitational pull weaker the
  farther away from the sun
• Solar polity (V. Lieberman) is a refinement on
  galactic polity in emphasizing that each planet
  replicates the sun with its own moons, like the
  solar system

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Kingdom of Words

• Jane Drakard, using Minangkabau in central
  Sumatra as model of a kingdom of words
• Minangkabau had kings from 14th to 19th
  centuries, yet had no armies, no administrative
  apparatus, only reputation
• Ability to influence and hence govern activities
  of the Minangkabau people based on cultural
  acceptance of the ruler as one possessing great
  spiritual powers association of first ruler with
  Tantric bodhisattva Amoghapasa
• Manifestation of power in letters sent to
  Minangkabau living abroad (rantau) with preamble
  detailing the sacred genealogy and powers of the
  ruler
• Power conveyed both orally and in the missive
  containing the written word with special seals
• Letters carried by special emissaries seen to be
  bearers of the sacred powers of the rulers to
  Minangkabau in rantau proved higly effective in
  organizing trade and community abroad

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MINANGKABAU
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ADITYAVARMAN (mid-14th century), as Tantric
Bodhisattva Amoghapasa
Jakarta Museum
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Negara The Theatre State

• Clifford Geertz uses nineteenth century Bali as
  model for understanding polities as theatre
• Idea of the exemplary center, where court and
  capital represent both the microcosm of the
  universe and the center of political order
• Competing dadias (agnatic descendants of a common
  ancestor) threaten unity, hence need for regular
  ceremonies and rituals by center to maintain
  unity
• Such ceremonies and rituals affirm kings role as
  center of the world, while providing arena for
  rival dadia to demonstrate their loyalty to
  ruler, thus alleviating tensions
• Geertz These pageants constitute important
  features of the state they are the state.

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Sources

• Wolters, O.W. History, Culture, and Region in
  Southeast Asian Perspectives. Revised Edition,
  Ithaca Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1999
  1982.
• Tambiah, Stanley. The Galactic Polity The
  Structure of Traditional Kings in Southeast
  Asia. Annals of the New York Academy of Science
  293 (15 July 1977), 69-97.
• Victor Lieberman. Strange Parallels, vol. 1.
  Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Drakard, Jane. A Kingdom of Words Language and
  Power in Sumatra. Kuala Lumpur Oxford
  University Press, 2000.
• Geertz, Clifford. Negara The Theatre State in
  Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton Princeton
  University Press, 1980.

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Features of Diversity

• Various ideas of state reflect differing cultural
  responses to external influences they exhibit
  dynamic absorption of external ideas and
  reformulated into new local concepts
• A strong motivating factor of localization is the
  need to harness the unknown force for benefit of
  community
• In precolonial Southeast Asia the diversity of
  forms of polity reflects the varied responses of
  community based on cultural ideas, the
  environment, and human agency

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Continuity in Colonial and Modern Southeast Asian
States

• Colonial regimes created the outlines of nations
  in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Burma rest
  followed outlines of nations already established
  prior to the introduction of colonialism
• Southeast Asian states continue to be plagued by
  internal dissensions based on religious and/or
  ethnic differences hence the need for ongoing
  measures to maintain these unities through
  various means
• Forms of unifying measures invention of
  tradition in sense of selecting common
  experiences to create bond (revolutionary
  struggle against colonialism) histories,
  schools, national language, ceremonies
• Yet the ongoing need for such measures
  demonstrates the persistence of the local factors

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Diversities

• Anti-state groups (James C. Scott, The Art of Not
  Being Governed, 2010) view that marginal groups
  deliberately seek escape from state in periphery
  perceived by center as outside the law or
  outside civilization
• Despite emphasis on a linear evolution into
  centralized polities, family or kinship
  alliances, is more typical of Southeast Asia with
  focus on personal following (cacique democracy)
• Anthony Day. Ties that (Un)Bind Families and
  States in Premodern Southeast Asia, Journal of
  Asian Studies55, 2 (May 1996), 384-409

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Strength of Precolonial Features in the Modern
Period

• Dominant religions in Southeast Asian countries
  (Islam, Theravada Buddhism, Christianity) are all
  facing challenges from the new religions
• In Theravada Buddhism, efforts by the
  state-sanctioned sangha authority to standardize
  practices largely ignored persistence of
  saints (women of prowess) in daily practice
• In Islam, strength of local Sufi brotherhoods led
  by individual leaders

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Dynamics of Kinship Networks and States in
Southeast Asia-1

• History of region is a record of the ongoing
  movement between powerful and extensive kinship
  networks forming states (unity), and their
  subsequent loss of power to other contending
  networks, becoming then the factions
  (diversity)
• Rivalry of kinship networks was the stimulus for
  localization of external forces (e.g. Indic,
  Islamic, Sinic, Christian ideas of kingship) to
  gain advantage through reformulated ideas of
  power
• Emphasis on family relationships (of blood,
  marriage, compadrazgo, milk siblings, ancestors,
  and spirits) and hierarchy

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Dynamics of Kinship Networks and States in
Southeast Asia-2

• World religions and colonialism have strengthened
  hierarchy and patriarchal tendencies
• Yet, on the ground, proliferation of women
  mediums, spiritual groups, new religions in
  continuance of people of prowess idea
• Gendered concepts in Southeast Asia based on
  ideas of world as divided into two basic
  patterns male and female challenged today by
  modern ideas of sexuality, creating more
  possibilities

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In the Age of the Internet

• Benedict Anderson in his Imagined Communities
  (1983) never imagined a vitual community
• Internet has dismantled political boundaries by
  both expanding and contracting their borders
• Result has been greater participation and
  influence in the political (in broad sense)
  process Orang Asli as part of world-wide
  indigenous communities Sufi brotherhoods as part
  of a world-wide ummah or local ethnic community
  like-minded individuals battling in the
  blogosphere against state domination

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Lessons Learned?

• Fill in the blanks (please use black ink)