Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes a case study of the Harvest Festival in Sabah, Malaysia, analysing its celebration as a site of a struggle between an ethnic minority, the Kadazan, and the state over the definition of the role the ethnic culture should play within the project of national unit and nation building of this multi-ethnic country.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents an anthropological analysis of the annual Harvest Festival (Pesta Kaamatan) of the Bornean State of Sabah, Malaysia, focussing on two main celebrations, one organised by the Malaysian federal authorities and one by the most important local cultural association, both of which took place in May 2006.

The paper argues that the celebrations, and the ethnic symbolic markers they display, most of which can be considered 'invented traditions' elaborated from the selection of objectified traditional elements, constitute a primary site of struggle between the central state and members of a minority ethnic group, the Kadazan, over the definition of the role the ethnic culture should play in the national culture.

While the central state used the celebration, and its televised broadcast, to advance its project of creating a national culture and identity going beyond ethnic differences, the ethnic elites used the celebration to re-affirm the centrality of certain ethnic cultural traits and the right of the minority to their own cultural specificity, following an established tradition of 'ethno-nationalism'. Many ordinary Kadazan rejected the appropriation and instrumentalisation of their ethnic culture by both elites, and of its commodification by commercial sponsors, contrapposing a 'lived culture', constituted by the festive and everyday practices carried out within their villages.

The analysis of these events constitute an essential step in the attempt to clarify how identities emerge from the crystallisation of both essential symbols used in collective mobilisation and of lived experience constituted by practices shared within certain groups.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the diverse functions and meanings of the Katu Community House (guol) as an element of national cultural policies and as a symbolically charged expression of local cultural traditions.

Paper long abstract:

Since the mid 1990-ies, in the wake of Vietnam's <i>doi moi</i> (economic renovation) policy, selective manifestations of culture among Vietnam's numerous ethnic minority groups have been promoted by the state. This paper deals with the social and cultural implications of this policy for the Katu people in the Annamite (Truong Son) mountains of central Vietnam. As it happens, the traditional <i>guol</i> (communal-house) institution among the Katu is strongly promoted by the state as a vehicle for strengthening community solidarity and a venue for the dissemination of national development policies. At the same time, practices related to funerals and the building of elaborate tomb houses for the dead - traditionally a significant cultural practice - is actively opposed. Both institutions are central to Katu collective identity. In particular, the paper discusses the transformation of the <i>guol</i> institution from a social and cultural centre-piece of Katu identity-construction, materialised in the magnificent and elaborately decorated communal house, into a political arena in the service of the state - a stage for promulgating the state's vision of cultural development and progress.

Paper short abstract:

In the paper I would like to consider the matter how ethnic groups living in Vietnam are conceptualized and presented in official discourse, focusing on the case of Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. The following case reflects the overall policy of Vietnamese authorities towards the matter of ethnic diversity.

Paper long abstract:

In the paper I would like to consider the matter how ethnic groups living in Vietnam are conceptualized and presented in official discourse, focusing on the case of Vietnam Museum of Ethnology.

Analyses of museum exhibitions as materialization of colonial discourse of power and dominance were popularized by such ethnographers as James Clifford and Moira Simpson. It is worth considering to what extend this conception is accurate in case of countries such as Vietnam, itself once being a colonized country, but simultaneously involved in relations of dominance and submission with non-Vietnamese ethnic groups, populating the country.

The museum was meant to be an example of modern exhibition, following contemporary trends in museology. However, analyzing the content of presented exhibition we can observe contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the postulate of "giving voice" to presented people is to some extend fulfilled. On the other hand the ethnic groups are still presented in a kind of evolutionary paradigm. The issue of contemporary changes in these societies is treated in a highly selective way, reflecting the policy of Vietnamese government directed towards ethnic minorities, described by Oscar Salemink as "selective preservation".

The case of Vietnam Museum of Ethnology reflects the overall policy of Vietnamese authorities towards the matter of ethnic diversity. Attempts to fulfill the requirements of modernization and maintaining the authority over the whole society, leads the official discourse into contradiction between meeting postulates of affirmation of ethnic diversity and strengthening the national unity.

Paper short abstract:

Based on a long-term research on Toraja political discourse during the first decade of post-Suharto Indonesia, this paper analyzes debates on regional autonomy and it explores how the interests of local, national, and global actors are positioned in a complex web of intersections and disjunctures.

Paper long abstract:

Analyzing debates on good governance video-recorded between 1999 and 2007 in the Toraja highlands of Sulawesi, this paper provides an ethnographic reflection on the multiple meanings of "cultural politics". A notion that refers both to the political uses of "culture" by different interest groups and to the cultural dimension of politics. In Toraja, the process of decentralization, which marked the first years of the post-Soeharto era, coincided with a call for a system of administrative divisions, which took into account "cultural difference". The first phase (1999-2003) of the regional autonomy reform was imbued with a 'new politics of tradition' (Bubandt 2002). The "desa", an administrative unit introduced during the New Order to achieve uniformity and enhance control at the local level, was replaced by the "lembang". A "pre-colonial" unit, whose boundaries, it was argued, rather than being the outcome of arbitrary political decisions, reflected longstanding cultural divisions. In more recent years (2004-present), the initial appeal to tradition and to the involvement of 'traditional civil society' into the local politics was replaced by a new emphasis on bureaucratic effectiveness and on the need to increase the number of government provisions at the grass-root level. Looking at how discourses on good governance have shifted from participation and tradition to efficiency and accessibility, the paper not only reveals the interplay between local actors and (inter-)national agencies in the unfolding of the decentralization process, but it also highlights the complicities and clashes between new global concepts and traditional political styles in Toraja public discourse.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the interrelations between self-understandings of ‘Malayness’ amongst Malays in West Kalimantan and other forms of identification. Understandings of Malayness have always been translocal in nature, drawing on regional and Islamic themes. To what extent have national relations shaped and delimited this translocalism?

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the interrelations between local self-understandings of 'Malayness' amongst Malays in West Kalimantan and local, national and transnational identities. Understandings of Malayness have always been strongly translocal in nature, drawing on regional and Islamic themes. The paper asks to what extent national and intra-national relations have shaped and limited this translocalism. This paper draws on my ongoing research into the social, political and economic conditions which make translocal identity construction possible and its implications for inter-cultural and inter-religious interaction, association and conflict in what we call the modern 'Malay World'. Recent years have seen a tremendous growth of interest in the formation of global cultural and religious loyalties, in part because such loyalties have been seen to pose a threat to the integrity of nation states, and in part because at least in some instances such 'translocalism' is seen as a possible 'cosmopolitan' corrective to xenophobia and ethnic chauvinism. Here there is some evidence to suggest that translocal Malay identity processes in the region have been consistent with positive forms of intercultural association, such as civility and tolerance. The paper outlines a number of spheres, such as religious associations and civil society organisations in order to explore the mechanisms of translocal relationships and their interaction with national and intra-national political, social and economic relations.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explore the challenges for Indonesian Muslim women's organizations in the context of women's empowerment in Islam, male authority, and the increasing importance of Islamism.

Paper long abstract:

Since democratisation in 1998 the debate about the re-definition of gender roles has become more prominent in Indonesia. Whereas liberals are voting for gender justice and have implemented programs for women's empowerment in religious institutions, conservative Muslim preachers and politicians are calling for restrictive gender norms and implementation of Islamic law. In this strained situation secular and Muslim women's organisations try to develop emancipatory counter-movements and to enforce ideas about gender justice.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork from April until August 2008 in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, this paper proposes to analyze, how young Muslim women encounter the increasing importance of Islamism in Indonesia, how they position themselves vis a vis the fact that male religious authorities still have the prerogative of interpreting religious sources and which mutual local strategies and instruments, for instance shared religious rituals, values, symbols and programs, they use to promote women's empowerment.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the return Vietnamese diaspora regarding the diverse interactions between the state and nationals with return migrants and takes such interactive dynamics as a social space for negotiating modernity.

Paper long abstract:

In an age of globalization and migration, not only is the migrant identity often constructed and reconstructed in the shifting domains of cultural dynamics, the identity of the nation-state is also diversely affected with the presence of large communities of transnational subjects and return migrants. The Vietnamese diaspora has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. But many of these previous studies focus on the Vietnamese migrants living abroad, research on return migrants is still rare. Since the mid 1990s, the odessey of the Vietkieu (overseas Vietnamese) has been swiftly 'recycled' with hundreds of thousands of them returning 'home' to work and invest.

This paper argues that the return Vietnamese diaspora has created a new social platform for discursive reconstruction of the Vietnamese past and present and posed new questions on 'boundary' making related to histories, patriotism, immigration policies, and transnationality. Much of the rhetorical and ideological embellishment within the shifting official views towards the Vietkieu 'patriots' and the public opinions of the changing roles of Vietkieu have forced the nation as a whole to adopt endemic strategies in accommodating different layers of cultural and identity politics which in turn contribute to the building of the Vietnamese modernity.

Paper short abstract:

A concept of ethnicity based on the system-environment divide, with systems consisting of communications, not persons, is tested for Upland Southeast Asia to the aim of locating ethnicity among other socio-cultural differences, both in modern and non-modern settings.

Paper long abstract:

Since Leach and Lehman, scholars are aware of the relationality of ethnic boundaries in upland Southeast Asia, both in states and minority areas. This resulted in attempts to replace the notion of structure with system. Yet, this notion needs further elaboration to become a valid analytical tool. The present talk attempts at modifying and applying approaches from Luhmann's theory of social systems. Ethnicity is seen as a type of system that does not classify persons, but communications. These systems and their reproduction are based on particular semantics that establish what kind of difference is marked as "ethnic". The reproduction of systems of ethnicity thus depends on the processing of information from other systems. The type of difference marked as "ethnic" depends on the other types of difference (in particular local vs. national, class, political affiliation etc.) and their respective valorization in relation to each other.

Paper short abstract:

During armed conflict with the Burman military junta a Kachin community became "Burman". Reactions to the complex developments and the impact of corrective responses and cultural politics on Kachin society are discussed.

Paper long abstract:

A Kachin community was persuaded to believe that it was Burman by psychologist-strategists of the Burman military government, and thus began a painful search to identify "Burmanness" in the Kachin cultural or lived experience. Not finding supporting evidence here the search veered toward looking for indications of "non-Kachinness" in the experience, and this continues today. This paper will discuss the cultural politics that emerged from this defection and became pervasive in the entire Kachin society.

The important elements in this ethnographical episode are why a culture-identity switch appeared possible in the Kachin context, how the military junta strategists read Kachin culture and society, how the other communities reacted, and the characteristics of the cultural politics that emerged in response, and affects the entire Kachin society today.

The key concepts relevant to the analysis are: ethnicity and ethnic categories as changeable and adaptive characteristics, cultural integration as political unity in the face of enduting conflicts, and the emergence of cultural politics intended to address the problem of defection as a generalized problem.