Showing papers in "Critical Asian Studies in 2006"

HEGEMONIC ASPIRATIONS: New Middle Class Politics and India's Democracy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: This article uses an analysis of the rise of India's New Middle Class (NMC) to develop a class analytics of democratic politics in India. The article locates the politics of India's democracy within the framework of comparative class analytics and integrates class analysis with the politics of caste, religion, and language. The article develops two central arguments. The first is that the dominant fraction of the middle class plays a central role in the politics of hegemony. These hegemonic politics are played out both as attempts to coordinate the interests of the dominant classes and to forge internal unity within the highly diverse fragments of the middle class. But rather than producing the classical pattern of liberal hegemony (in which the ruling bloc actively elicits the consent of subordinate classes) in India these projects have been marked by middle-class illiberalism, and most notably a distancing from lower classes. Second, we argue that the contours of the NMC can be grasped as a cla...

Middle-class activism and the politics of the informal working class

Abstract: This article, drawing on the results of both survey research and of ethnography in Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, concerns the relationships between the middle class and the informal working class in Indian cities in the sphere of civil society. These relationships are shown to be very significant in the definition of the “middle class” and a critical dimension of the reproduction of class relationships. They also demonstrate that civil society should not be abstracted from the field of class relations, in the way that characterizes some contemporary arguments about the potentials of civil organization. Civil society is shown to be distinctly stratified. On the whole it is a sphere of middle class activism, and such activism is one of the defining features of the middle class. Members of the informal working class, on the other hand, are largely excluded from active participation in civil society organizations, so that increasing opportunities for political participation through civil organizatio...

History, identity, and security: Producing and consuming nationalism in China

Abstract: Chinese nationalism has ignited much debate among academics and the general public in both China and the West. Rather than search for the true core of Chinese nationalism, this essay will examine the curious custom of National Humiliation Day as an oblique entry into the politics of identity. The nation is not simply a question of people or territory, the author contends, but of time: the national time scripted by events such as National Humiliation Day. By comparing the differing practices of the holiday as it was celebrated in the early twentieth century and is observed in the early twenty-first century, the author argues that in the early twentieth century the political performances aimed to produce a proper Chinese nation out of the clashes between the Qing dynasty, northern warlords, and foreign empires. The goal was to construct a “China” worthy of being saved. When National Humiliation Day was revived in China at the turn of the twenty-first century, the political performances were more fo...

Continuity and change: The changing contours of organized violence in post–New Order Indonesia

Abstract: This article examines the changing nature of organized violence in post–New Order Indonesia. The New Order regime, which ended with the overthrow of Suharto in 1998, employed violence as a central strategy for maintaining political control, both through the state apparatus and via state proxies: criminal and paramilitary groups acting in the state's behalf. In effect, violence and criminality were normalized as state practice. The collapse of the New Order and the resulting fragmentation of its patronage networks have prompted a decline in state-sponsored violence, but at the same time the number of non-state groups employing violence and intimidation as a political, social, and economic strategy has increased. This article looks at this phenomenon of the “democratization” and privatization of organized violence in post–New Order Indonesia via detailed case studies of a number of paramilitary and vigilante groups. While operating in a manner similar to organized crime gangs, each group articulate...

FROM WORK TO WELFARE A New Class Movement in India

Abstract: The rigidity of early class analysis and the recent demise of any type of class analytics have turned attention away from examining the growing population of informally employed workers as a class. By not examining informal workers as a class “in themselves,” we are losing insights into how they are translating their positions into a class “for themselves.” As a consequence, the recent literature on globalization and liberalization is increasingly concluding that the decreasing proportion of formally employed workers (and the subsequent rise in informal employment) the world over signifies a decline in all class-based organization. Such arguments have obscured our understanding of the current social dynamics of exploitation and resistance. In an attempt to begin filling this gap, this article recovers class as an important analytical tool with which to examine (1) the current relations of power between the state, employers, and the majority of India's workers, and (2) how the structures of produc...

Thaksin and the resurgence of violence in the Thai South: Network monarchy strikes back?

Abstract: Rather than viewing the recent violence in the Thai South largely as a product of long-standing historical and socioeconomic grievances, this article argues that the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has played a crucial role in provoking conflict in the region. Early in his premiership, Thaksin decided that the South was controlled by forces of “network monarchy” loyal to the palace and to former prime minister Prem Tinsulanond. Thaksin sought to reorganize political and security arrangements in the deep South in order to gain personal control of the area, but in the process he upset a carefully negotiated social contract that had ensured relative peace for two decades. As the violence increased, royal displeasure — articulated mainly by members of the Privy Council — forced Thaksin to make certain concessions, notably the creation of a National Reconciliation Commission to propose solutions for the growing crisis. Network monarchy had struck back, albeit from a position of weaknes...

On the decline of class analysis in south asian studies

Abstract: The decline of class analysis has been pervasive across the intellectual landscape in recent years. But South Asian studies stands out in the severity with which it has been hit by this phenomenon. It also is the field where the influence of post-structuralism has been most pronounced in the wake of Marxism's decline. This essay offers an explanation for both the decline of class analysis and the ascendance of post-structuralism in South Asian studies as practiced in the United States. I suggest that the decline of class theorizing was a predictable and natural result of the decline of working-class politics in the United States. But the severity of its decline in South Asian studies in particular was a symptom of its never having made much of a dent on the field in the first place. This left unchallenged the traditional, Indological approach, which was heavily oriented toward culturalism. This in turn made the field a hospitable ground for the entrance of post-structuralism, which, like mainstre...

Why did “operation cremate monsanto” fail?

Abstract: Though promoted by the Government of India, and endorsed by dominant international organizations concerned with agriculture, biotechnology has produced fierce resistance and divisions. “Operation Cremate Monsanto” combined nationalist appeals, opposition to multinational capital, and rejection of genetic engineering in one integrated critique. The movement failed; Monsanto's technology spread rapidly and widely in India. The movement illustrated a larger problematic of understanding interests under conditions of rapid and complex technological change. Science continually presents new challenges to the way interests are understood by citizens and political classes that control states; the sea change in redefinitions of interests — of both individuals and states — introduced by, for example, the atmospheric science of ozone holes and climate change is archetypal, as are the internationally contentious battles in trade and property of “genetically modified organisms.” Interests in biotechnology are ...

Private authority and disaster relief: The cases of post-tsunami Aceh and Nias

Abstract: This article explores the rise of private authority in globalized disaster relief scenarios by looking at the case of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in Aceh and its neighboring region, Nias, after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The author places the growing strength and presence of NGOs within the larger context of weak, cash-strapped local governments under decentralization schemes promoted by neoliberal economic policies and argues that under such conditions, private actors such as NGOs are gaining a legitimacy of authority once reserved exclusively for the state. In Aceh after the tsunami, five hundred NGOs began operating relief and recovery efforts on the island with little consultation with local Acehnese government agencies and community organizations. The article concludes by arguing that the example of Aceh, in which public and private parallel systems of relief and recovery have been operating raises long-term issues of accountability for all parties involved.

INTRODUCTION: Restoring Agency to Class: Puzzles from the Subcontinent

Abstract: Class explains much in the differentiation of life chances and political dynamics in South Asia. Yet in the subcontinent class has lost its centrality as a way of understanding the world and how it changes. Indian intellectuals have been a major force in the eclipsing of class through discursive strategies of constructivist idealism. Formalism in social sciences finds class relations elusive and difficult to measure. Market triumphalism eclipsed concern with rehabilitation of “weaker sectors” and redressing of exploitation as measures of national success. Class analytics, however, continues to serve two critical functions: disaggregating development and explaining challenges to rules of the game. Restoring agency to class requires attention first to relations that structure choice in restricted or expansive ways. Global forces have altered people's relations to production and to one another, as have changes in the political opportunity structure, with significant effects on tactics and outcomes. ...

Was the indian labor movement ever co-opted?

Abstract: Despite its central importance to India's political and economic development, the organizational capacity of India's working class is poorly understood. Standard social scientific accounts portray the Indian working class as weakened by continual fragmentation and wholly dominated by political parties and the state. Social scientists therefore assume that the Indian working class is economically and politically inconsequential. This essay challenges these prominent misconceptions. Drawing on original survey data, government statistics, and a discussion of Indian industrial and labor law, the author shows that the Indian labor movement has been much more unified, much more contentious in the collective bargaining arena, and much more politically influential than previously assumed. The author speculates that the key reason social scientists have misjudged the strength of organized labor in India is that their assessments have relied too heavily on “key source” interviews with business, political a...

Gendering moral capital: Morality as a political asset and strategy of top female politicians in Asia

Abstract: In contrast to social capital, moral capital remains an under-researched topic in political science. In Asia, however, moral capital is one of the core assets of women politicians on their way to power. Kane defines moral capital as a specific political value of virtue that inclines others, in particular the political public and followers, to bestow (ethical) prestige, respect, loyalty, and authority on a political actor or the representative of an institution that the actor herself/himself can use as a resource to mobilize for political goals, activities, or support. This article addresses two questions. First, in which circumstances does moral capital become a significant asset for women on the rise to the top echelons of political power in Asia? Second, how do women politicians use moral capital as a political strategy, campaign instrument, and/or asset of public imaging? The authors discuss four case studies of female opposition politicians — Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, Malaysia's Wan Azizah, S...

Balancing justice and reconciliation in East Timor

Abstract: As East Timor emerges from a long Indonesian nightmare, it is seeking to balance the agendas of justice and reconciliation The verdict on justice for East Timor is one of disappointment The main obstacle to accountability is Indonesia, abetted by an international community that seeks its assistance in the “war on terror” East Timor's leaders have emphasized reconciliation while promoting a healing process and good governance Recent violence reveals just how difficult this task remains The hybrid tribunal established in East Timor by the UN was once heralded as an important innovation in transitional justice, avoiding the high cost and lengthy proceedings of other international tribunals However, the tribunal has been unable to hold accountable those who bear the greatest responsibility for outrages committed against Timorese and defendants did not get fair trials or competent defense A truth commission report released in December 2005, Chega! (Enough), emphasizes justice and reparations T

Unpacking Thailand's southern conflict: The poverty of structural explanations

Abstract: Violence in southern Thailand can be interpreted in many ways. Recent survey study, however, shows that people are now becoming more inclined to attribute the violence to the activities of militants and extremists, acting in the name of separatist or similar movements. The empirical data also illustrate that escalation of southern violence in recent years makes obvious the patterns of target-oriented and well-planned attacks, as demonstrated in many cases of violent attacks on civilians and government officials in 2004 and 2005. On the other hand, structural statistics indicate that poverty may not be the root cause of crisis, as direct relationships between incidents of poverty and violence are thus far ambiguous. The survey findings that form the basis of this article demonstrate that social grievances may serve as necessary conditions behind the bloodshed, but the decisive factors driving are upsurge of violence lie in the movements' ideological beliefs. To obtain a clearer understanding of th...

Thaksin's Achilles' Heel: The failure of Hawkish approaches in the Thai South

Abstract: Many scholars voice approval for the political strategies and approaches that businessman-turned-politician Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has borrowed from the business world. His CEO management style is regarded as a key political asset. Moreover, his populist policies such as the “one village–one tambon” village fund and the “bank for the poor” show him to be full of concern for grass-roots Thais. In this article I argue that Thaksin's handling of the South reveals another side of his character, his preference for the use of violence to tackle problems and his disdain for “softer” methods such as discussion and negotiations. Thaksin pays very little attention to peaceful solutions offered by academics, the National Human Right Commission, and even the government-appointed National Reconciliation Commission. Unfortunately, this hawkish approach has widened distrust and discrimination among Thais and non-Thais. Thaksin's draconian methods have had serious consequences both on himself and the ...

Islam, radicalism, and violence in Southern Thailand: Berjihad di Patani and the 28 April 2004 attacks

Abstract: Violence in Thailand's deep South centers on Muslim unrest, which has been simmering since World War II. What was once a low-level secessionist insurgency has now developed into a full-scale conflict and violent campaign that has claimed hundreds of lives in the three southern border provinces. This amounts to the most serious political violence in recent Thai history. The main argument of this article is that the separatist struggle, which was initially based on a Malay national liberation struggle, has taken on undertones of a radical Islamist ideology, and the discourse of the separatist struggle has significantly shifted to that of radical Islamist politics by calling for a jihad against the Thai state, its local agents, and their Muslim allies. This shift is exemplified by a document entitled Berjihad di Patani, which appears to have helped inspire the violent incidents of 28 April 2004. To a large extent, what is happening in southern Thailand follows similar developments elsewhere, both at...

The silence of the bullet monument: Violence and “Truth” management, Dusun-nyor 1948, and Kru-Ze 2004

Abstract: The so-called Dusun-nyor rebellion of April 1948 is a central and highly controversial episode in the history of southern Thailand. During the “rebellion,” Malay-Muslim villagers fought pitched battles with Thai police and soldiers. Drawing upon sources from a variety of perspectives, this article reviews these events in light of the Thai state's persistent attempts at “truth” management. What soon emerges is that the same events are understood quite differently by those of different perspectives. Using insights developed in other studies of the political usages of monuments, the article focuses on a rather mysterious “bullet monument” that commemorates the 1948 event. The bullet-shaped monument, which is located in the grounds of a police station in Narathiwat Province, has no accompanying text. Like the rebellion whose suppression it appears to celebrate, the bullet monument represents an ambiguous and confusing manifestation of collective memory. In various respects, the “Dusun-nyor rebellion”...

Reassessing Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan: A declassified history

Abstract: This article reassesses Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan in 1979, based on newly available archival materials, especially from the former USSR. The article argues that these Soviet documents show that the 1979 invasion reflected defensive rather than offensive objectives. Specifically, the USSR sought to restrain extremist elements of the Afghan communist party, who were undermining stability on the southern Soviet frontier. The findings of this article are at odds with with long-standing views that the invasion of Afghanistan was part of a larger Soviet strategy aimed at threatening the Persian Gulf and other western interests.

War on error and the Southern fire: How terrorism analysts get it wrong

Abstract: This extended, five-part critique of Conflict and Terrorism in Southern Thailand interrogates how terrorism experts have interpreted the recent escalation of violence in the Thai southern border provinces. It does so by questioning the authors' use of sources, and draws on a range of alternative Thai-and English-language sources to suggest that the authors have reached poorly founded conclusions. The first part considers the contemporary context of terrorism studies and argues that it is important to understand Conflict and Terrorism as a knowledge product influenced by that discipline. The second presents an overview of competing theories concerning events in Thailand, as background to the conclusions presented in Conflict and Terrorism. The third evaluates the book's conclusion that Thailand faces a renewed insurgency, largely driven by domestic factors and carried out by definable actors. The fourth part examines the authors' claim concerning the importance of a booklet titled Berjihad di Pata...

Social injustice and economic dynamism in contemporary Korea

Abstract: This article examines the processes of labor market restructuring and welfare reform in South Korea since the 1997/98 crisis, arguing that the Korean state-capital complex has succeeded in effecting a substantial redistribution of income from labor to capital. This redistribution of income has played a critical role in enhancing Korea's international competitiveness and in facilitating a return to sustained growth. The principal mechanisms through which this redistribution has been achieved are the intensified exploitation of weaker sections of the proletariat and the reduction of the traditionally more protected organized sections of the workforce in major firms. At the same time, the state has strengthened welfare safety nets and sought to place concerns about structural competitiveness at the heart of the welfare regime through the promotion of vocational training. What has been most striking about the process of welfare reform, however, has been the capacity of the state to limit the growth o...

Voices from Pattani: Fears, suspicion, and confusion

Abstract: By December 2005, violence in the South of Thailand had taken the lives of more than one thousand people. In this article, the voices of southerners are presented as they were recorded during the author's two-year stay in Pattani Province and various Malay-Muslim villages in southern Thailand. Verbatim excerpts from tok imams (religious teachers), overseas scholars, academics, fisherfolk, and locals of various ethnicity and religious groups illustrate perspectives and frustrations about the violence. Fears, suspicions, and confusion are the most prominent emotions embedded in these conversations. These excerpts illustrate the foremost concerns of the common people in the South, among them, impertinent threats to livelihood security and peaceful ethnic coexistence in the region.

China's new order and past disorders: A Dialogue Starting from Wang Hui's analysis

Abstract: This dialogue develops a series of reflections on contemporary Chinese politics starting from Wang Hui's analysis of the role that the repression of the spring 1989 movement played in the acceleration of China's neoliberalist economic policies, and more in general about the peculiar forms of intervention of the party-state in the implementation of capitalist forms of economy. Four major issues are discussed: some probings of the political value of the Tiananmen movement; the suppression of the agricultural people's communes; the parallel transformation of the industrial danwei system; and the rise of Deng Xiaoping's strategy as a form of reactive subjectivity toward the political experiments of the late sixties and early seventies. The authors argue that the major consistency in the Chinese state today is the process of harsh depoliticization of subjectivities deployed during the Cultural Revolution, and retrospectively throughout the entire twentieth century in China. On the other hand, this pro...

Introduction: Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence

Abstract: What lies behind the recent violence in the Thai South? This apparently simple question is surprisingly difficult to answer. The subregion that includes the three provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat (see map, p. 10) was only incorporated into Siam (as the country was then known) in 1909, and more than 80 percent of its population of around 1.8 million are Malay Muslims. Political and administrative power, however, remains firmly in the hands of a de facto Buddhist state. The area has a long history of resistance to the authority of Bangkok, and the past century has been characterized by periodic bouts of insurgency. During the 1970s, this insurgency was linked to an explicit “separatist” movement. Many of the leaders of that movement surrendered under an amnesty policy announced in 1980. The Prem Tinsulanond government (1980–88) effectively brokered a kind of social contract in the area. The security forces were not too abusive, local Muslim leaders could report problems to a central agency and in exchange violence was kept to manageable levels. Nevertheless, Malay Muslims in the three provinces continued to harbor a range of grievances against the Thai state, particularly about access to educational and employment opportunities. In February 2001, Thailand underwent a change in political direction. Whereas the 1990s had seen the decline of military influence, the institutionalization of parliamentary politics, and the promulgation of the liberal, reformist 1997 constitution, the new millennium witnessed the remarkable political rise of Thaksin Shinawatra. A billionaire telecommunications tycoon, often casually compared with Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Thaksin was also a former police officer who was determined to subordinate Thailand to his personal conCritical Asian Studies 38:1 (2006), 003-009

The transnational construction of “national allegory”: China and the cultural politics of postcolonial Indonesia

Abstract: “The story of the private individual destiny,” declares Fredric Jameson, “is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society.” Using the case of China's involvement in the cultural politics of postcolonial Indonesia, this essay examines the transnational dynamisms of the making of a national allegory and discusses the production and reception of the China images in Sukarno's Indonesia (1949–65), with a focus on the PRC's cultural diplomacy and how Chinese literary principles were appropriated and domesticated, subsequently constituting an integral component of Indonesian cultural politics. Arguing that the narratives about China (both as a sociopolitical entity and a cultural symbol) served as an important transnational inspiration to public deliberations and cultural polemics—thus contributing to the formation of national allegories in postcolonial Indonesia, this essay takes the Jamesonian thesis a step further by suggesting that a transnational imagi...

The Social Imperative of Pacifism in Postwar Japan: Shimizu Ikutaro and the Uchinada Movement

Abstract: Postwar Japanese history is often analyzed from the perspective of peace and democracy. Both ideas represented an interpretation of the war experience on the part of postwar progressive thinkers that saw postwar pacifist activism assume an anti-State character. But another important part of this intellectual context was its pro-society inclination. Social agency and autonomy became the main objectives of postwar progressive thinking, and it was this that drove the intellectual activism and advocacy of postwar pacifist movements. But how did intellectuals conceptualize society, and what were the consequences of this conceptualization for the actual development of pacifist movements? Through examining the intellectual leadership of postwar pacifist movements we can begin to appreciate how the peace-democ-racy paradigm actually worked. A pioneering thinker in this respect was Shimizu Ikutarō, who was a central figure in Japanese pacifism in the 1950s, and a leading activist in the first anti-base mo...

Family or state?: Nation, war, and gender in Japan, 1937–45

Abstract: Nationalist ideology and nationalist practice in Japan between 1937 and 1945 were fundamentally conditioned by gender. For women, the proper roles of the subject were most fully elaborated through the patriotic women's associations, principally Aikoku fujinkai (Patriotic Women's Association), Kokubō fujinkai (Women's National Defense Association), and Dai Nippon fujinkai (Greater Japan Women's Association). The last of these claimed 27 million members throughout the empire. The women's associations attempted to define the ideal relation between women and the nation, primarily through an emphasis on home and motherhood. Yet, by 1945, wartime requirements had exposed basic flaws in their ideology from the state's point of view. Not only did the emphasis on home and motherhood impede the use of women in the labor force, more fundamentally, leaders of the women's associations and others realized that devotion to family might also lead to women failing to encourage their young sons to join the militar...

“Siberia under snow” by Kuroshima Denji: Translation and introduction by Lawrence Rogers

Abstract: Kuroshima Denji (1898–1943) was one of Japan's better-regarded proletarian writers, remembered both for his antiwar stories and his fictionalized accounts of the hardscrabble lives of farmers in pr...