Showing papers in "Modern Asian Studies in 2012"

The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle: Emerging Middle-Class Identities in Urban South India

Abstract: Recent economic changes in India have coincided with a dramatic change in the concept of a ‘middle class’ in the south Indian city of Madurai. Whereas previous sets of class identities were overwhelmingly dichotomous (for example, the rich and the poor, or the ‘big people’ and ‘those who have nothing’), the middle class has now become a highly elaborated component of local class structures and identities. It is also a contested category; moreover, its indigenous boundaries differ from those most often used by scholars, marketers, or policy-makers. Drawing from research over the past decade, this paper examines local definitions of ‘middleness’ and the moralized meanings ascribed to it. Whilst being ‘in the middle’ is a source of pride and pleasure, connoting both achievement and enhanced self-control, it is simultaneously a source of great tension, bringing anxiety over the critical and damaging scrutiny of onlookers. For each positive aspect of a middle-class identity that emphasizes security and stability, there is a negative ramification or consequence that highlights the precariousness and potential instability of middle-class life. In exploring each of these aspects, I pay attention to the explicitly performative features of class identities. I conclude by considering the epistemological and experiential insights we gain into the construction of emergent class categories by focusing on self-ascribed identities and their performance.

The Impact of Climate on Southeast Asia, circa 950–1820: New Findings

Abstract: The recent discovery of continuous tree-ring series starting as early as 1030 CE has for the first time made possible the reconstruction of historical climates for much of mainland Southeast Asia. Perhaps the most dramatic finding is that wide cyclic fluctuations in the reach and volume of monsoon rains contributed substantially to both the genesis and the collapse of the charter civilizations of Angkor, Pagan, and Dai Viet. From circa 1450–1820 climate continued to influence political and economic development, but its impact appears to have diminished both because the amplitude of hydrological fluctuations decreased markedly, and because new sources of power rendered early modern Southeast Asian states more resilient. A pioneering collaborative effort by a historian and a paleoclimatologist, this paper promises three benefits: It can help to solve a variety of local historiographic puzzles, it can facilitate construction of a synchronized historical narrative for mainland Southeast Asia as a whole, and it can aid comparisons between mainland Southeast Asia and other sectors of Eurasia.

Sites of Asian interaction: an introduction

Abstract: Recent work in history, anthropology, and related disciplines has opened up new ways of thinking about inter-Asian connections. The contributors to this issue aim to ground these themes in a concerted focus on particular spaces or sites. We suggest that sites can, in themselves, be constitutive of particular modes of Asian interactions. Much recent literature on Asian transnationalism has focused on Asian elites and on textual modes of interaction, notably focusing on the writings of pre-eminent Asian intellectuals and literary figures. In thinking about spaces of interaction, we aim to broaden the focus of discussion to include non-elite Asians and their interactions with each other. By focusing on spaces—real and virtual—these papers begin to conceive of new ways of capturing changing geographical imaginations and the fluidity of borders and boundaries across Asia.

Histories of Belonging(s): Narrating Territory, Possession, and Dispossession at the India-Bangladesh Border

Abstract: This paper offers a history of belonging in Dahagram, a sovereign Bangladeshi enclave situated within India but close to the India-Bangladesh border. I recount Dahagram's post-Partition history, focusing particularly on the long and localized struggles between 1974 and 1992 to open the Tin Bigha Corridor, a land bridge through Indian territory that links Dahagram to the Bangladeshi mainland. Drawing on the memories and experiences of residents, I examine Dahagram's past(s) as narratives of postcolonial belonging: to fragmented conceptions of state and nation, to surrounding areas, and to the enclave itself. I focus on the overlapping tensions between national and local struggles to ‘claim’ Dahagram as Bangladeshi or Indian territory, and uneven processes of political inclusion within and around the enclaves and within the Bangladeshi State. I use ‘belonging’ as a double-entendre, as these tensions are all intimately linked to possession of land/territory, goods, and access to markets. The notion of belonging(s) helps to illuminate Dahagram's historical and contemporary cultural politics and political-economy, as well as its articulations with broader events in postcolonial South Asia. Yet, belonging is also an analytic for understanding how history is remembered and articulated as a claim to territory, rights, and membership in unstable places.

Beyond the Paradox: Religion, Family and Modernity in Contemporary Bangladesh

Abstract: This paper reflects on the apparent ‘paradox’ of a contemporary Bangladesh that appears both ‘more modern’ and ‘more Islamic’, focusing on changes in the family (and the gender and generational orders that it embodies) as a central locus of anxiety and contestation. The paper begins with theory, how the paradox is framed by classical social science expectations of religious decline and how this has been contested by contemporary writers who describe specifically modern forms of piety. It then turns to Bangladesh, where highly publicized symbolic oppositions between ‘religion’ and ‘development’ contrast sharply with people’s pragmatic accommodation of development goods in everyday life. Analysis of religious references in interview data reveal the co-existence of very different understandings: a more traditional view of religion as embedded in the moral order; and a more modern deliberate cultivation of a religious life. They also reveal how many of the uses which people make of religion are not specifically religious: to conjure a moral universe, to mark what is important to them, to say things about themselves. The fi nal section returns to theory, reflecting on how this is informed by the findings from Bangladesh, and suggesting that the importance of the private and personal as a site for governance offers a further dimension of why the supposed ‘paradox’ of a religious modernity may not be so paradoxical after all.

Monetizing Politics: Financing Parties and Elections in Malaysia

Abstract: This paper assesses the patterns of financing of political parties and elections in Malaysia. The poor regulation of the activities of parties and of all forms of political elections has contributed to allegations of covert funding of politicians, from both Malaysian and foreign sources. Since parties have grossly unequal access to funds, this has led to unfairness in federal and state elections. This paper also deals with two fundamental issues in the financing of politics. First, Malaysia is one of very few countries where parties own corporate enterprises, a trend known as ‘political business’. Second, money-based factionalism, known as ‘money politics’, is threatening the existence of parties and undermining public confidence in government leaders. Party factionalism is based not on ideological differences but on which political leader has the greatest capacity to distribute funds to capture grassroots-level support. Two core issues contribute to the extensive monetization of politics. First, existing disclosure requirements do not adequately restrict the covert funding of politics or ensure electoral fair play. Second, public institutions that oversee electoral competition are not sufficiently autonomous to act without favour. Finally, this paper reviews the levels of transparency built into current legislation, the pattern of financing of parties and electoral campaigns, and the relevant regulatory bodies’ institutional capacity to ensure fairness and accountability during elections. The paper proposes legislative and institutional reforms to ensure electoral fairness, within and between parties.

The Life of the Irish Soldier in India: Representations and Self-Representations, 1857–1922

Abstract: The Irish in India present an interesting case. Arguably a colonized people, the colonies of the British Empire ironically afforded them employment and profit on a large scale. Although studies have been made of Irish administrators, it was Irish soldiers that were most numerous and it is the ‘stereotyped’ Irish soldier who represents his nation in depictions of the colonial military. This paper first summarizes the Irish military involvement in India. The reasons why men joined the army in large numbers and, in particular, why they sought service in India, are explored. The regimental culture into which they were absorbed is also examined. The representation of Irish soldiers in officers’ writings, both in fiction and popular media, is then discussed. The various aspects of the stereotype surrounding them are delineated, and the purposes of the colonial state served by their stereotypical representation are explained. Lastly, the reactions of Irish soldiers to their stereotype label are discussed. There were advantages to be gained from acting up to it, but it is argued also that soldiers found ways of rejecting bad or rebellious aspects of the stereotype and, by drawing on the ‘good’ or loyal aspects, helping to establish their own identity. Hence they manage to sustain and reconcile multiple national affiliations. Ultimately, however, the politics of Irish independence precipitates a crisis of identity which makes their position impossible. The paper concludes by considering the lives and memories of veterans of Indian service, and hence the afterlife of the Irish military identity beyond Irish independence.

Modernizing the Manileña: Technologies of conspicuous consumption for the well-to-do woman, circa 1880s–1930s

Abstract: From the late nineteenth century onwards, a new range of European and American technologies, powered by electricity and gas, and intended for use on the body and in the home—especially appliances for the domestic kitchen—began to appear in Manila. Electro-mechanical vibratory devices and steam-powered massagers for the body; hair waving and curling machines; and a multitude of technologies for the domestic kitchen, from stoves and water heaters to a gamut of electric and gas gadgetry that included percolators, boilers, electric waffle-irons, grills, and refrigerators (or ice-boxes, their precursor) were targeted largely at the affluent female consumer with promises to improve her physical appearance and health or make her daily life more comfortable. Their introduction and impact in the Philippines can tell a number of compelling stories—the desirability of European or American bourgeois culture, how the trappings of Western lifestyles were imagined, the extent to which the use and purchase of certain technologies aimed at replicating or emulating those lifestyles, or, as this paper explores, the gendered technological infrastructure of the ‘good life’. In this story, modern technologies designed for domestic settings and for use on women's bodies made manifest a myriad of desires and aspirations—prestige, status, cosmopolitanism, modernity, and urbanity. They also articulated a particular sensuousness and pleasure. Electro-vibratory devices, hair styling machines, and kitchen appliances could be experienced by all the senses and thus exerted a visceral appeal; their use proclaimed an enthusiasm for modern technology which, for the first time, emphasized the relevance of modern technology to women's everyday lives by the transformative effects they promised.

Measuring Living Standards in Different Colonial Systems: Some Evidence from South East Asia, 1900–1942

Abstract: This paper investigates the evidence on living standards in colonial economies, with particular reference to South East Asia in the decades from 1900 to 1942. Various measures are investigated, including availability of basic needs, demographic indicators, especially mortality rates, anthropometric measures and wage data. The paper concludes that in spite of the growth in GDP which occurred in most parts of the region between 1900 and 1940, improvements in living standards were modest, and by the late 1930s most colonies had low educational enrolments and high mortality rates. The Philippines had probably the highest living standards in the region, using educational indicators, mortality rates and per capita GDP estimates. But even in the Philippines rice availability per capita was low, and nutritional levels among some segments of the population were also below acceptable standards.

Surviving Sukarno: British Business in Post-Colonial Indonesia, 1950–1967*

Abstract: Drawing principally upon a rich vein of previously unexploited business records, this paper analyses the experience of British firms in Indonesia between the achievement of independence and the beginnings of the Suharto regime. As in The Netherlands East Indies, British enterprises occupied a significant position in post-colonial Indonesia in plantations, oil extraction, shipping, banking, the import-export trade, and manufacturing. After the nationalization of Dutch businesses from the end of 1957, Britain emerged as the leading investing power in the archipelago alongside the United States. However, during Indonesia's Confrontation with British-backed Malaysia (1963–1966), most UK-owned companies in the islands were subject to a series of torrid (albeit temporary) takeovers by the trade unions and subsequently various government authorities. Most of these investments were returned to British ownership under Suharto after 1967. But, in surviving the Sukarno era, British firms had endured 15 years of increasing inconvenience and insecurity trapped in a power struggle within Indonesia's perplexing plural polity (and particularly between the Communist Party and the military). Indeed, the Konfrontasi takeovers themselves, varying in intensity from region to region and from firm to firm, were indicative of deep fissures within Indonesian administration and politics. The unpredictable and unsettled political economy of post-colonial Indonesia meant that the balance of advantage lay not with transnational enterprise but with the host state and society.

Popular sites of prayer, transoceanic migration, and cultural diversity: Exploring the significance of keramat in Southeast Asia

Abstract: Keramat is the Malay word for the graves of notable figures which are popular sites of prayer and dot the social and physical landscapes of much of Muslim Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region as a whole. The term refers to both people as well as their burial sites. Historically, keramat drew people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. While the venerated dead also came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, histories, and faiths, they were usually Muslim and frequently Hadrami (from the Hadramaut region in Yemen). In this paper, I view keramat as a significant site of social and cultural diversity. The study of keramat, and the transoceanic movement of the people and faith to which it is linked, may shed further light on the cultural interaction that has historically characterized the region. At the same time, the permissibility of the veneration of graves constitutes a terrain that has long been contested by Muslim scholars. As a result, the fate of this popular practice may offer insights into the complex process of Islamization in the region which began around 700 years ago. I explore two questions in particular. First, in what ways do keramat embody cultural diversity? Secondly, where do keramat stand in relation to state- and organization-driven Islam?

The Raj on Nanjing Road: Sikh Policemen in Treaty-Port Shanghai ∗

Abstract: Sikh policemen were an indelible part of the landscape of Shanghai in the first decades of the twentieth century, and have left their mark in the ways in which the city is remembered up to the present day. Yet their history has never been told and historians of the period have, at best, simply referred to them in passing. This paper redresses this gap in the literature by accounting for the presence of the Sikh branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police and exploring their role in the governance and policing of the International Settlement. This enriches our understanding of the nature of the British presence in China and the ways in which Indian sub-imperialism extended to China's treaty ports, for on the streets of Shanghai, and not Shanghai alone, British power had an Indian face.

Stimulation, Segregation and Scandal: Geographies of Prostitution Regulation in British India, between Registration (1888) and Suppression (1923) ∗

Abstract: This paper explores the regulation of prostitution in colonial India between the abolition of the Indian Contagious Diseases Act in 1888 and the passing of the first Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act in 1923. It challenges the commonly held assumption that prostitutes naturally segregated themselves in Indian cities, and shows that this was a policy advocated by the Government of India. The object was to prevent the military visiting these segregated areas, in the absence of effective Cantonment Regulations for registering, inspecting, and treating prostitutes. The central government stimulated provincial segregation through expressing its desires via demi-official memoranda and confidential correspondence, to which Rangoon and Bombay responded most willingly. The second half of the paper explores the conditions, in both India and Ceylon, that made these segregated areas into scandalous sites in the early twentieth century. It situates the brothel amongst changing beliefs that they: increased rather than decreased incidents of homosexuality; stimulated trafficking in women and children; and encouraged the spread of scandalous white prostitutes ‘up-country’, beyond their tolerated location in coastal cosmopolitan ports. Taken alongside demands that the state support social reform in the early twentieth century, segregation provided the tipping point for the shift towards suppression from 1917 onwards. It also illustrates the scalar shifts in which central-local relations, and relations between provinces, in government were being negotiated in advance of the dyarchy system formalized in 1919.

Debating Radical Cinema: A History of the Film Society Movement in India

Abstract: This paper offers a history of the creation and development of film societies in India from 1947 to 1980. Members of the film society movement consisted of important Indian film directors such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Shyam Benegal, Basu Chatterji, Mani Kaul, G. Aravindan, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, and Mrinal Sen, as well as film enthusiasts, numbering about 100,000 by 1980. The movement, confined though it was to members who considered themselves film aficionados, was propelled by debates similar to those that animated left-oriented cultural movements which originated in late colonial India, namely, the Progressive Writers Association in 1936, and the Indian People's Theatre Association in 1942. By looking at the film society movement as an early and sustained attempt at civil-social organization in postcolonial India, this paper highlights the two distinct definitions of ‘good cinema’—from an aesthetically sophisticated product to a radical political text—that were debated during the time of the movement.

‘Do you own non-Chinese mui tsai?’ Re-examining Race and Female Servitude in Malaya and Hong Kong, 1919–1939*

Abstract: This paper considers the abolition of the mui tsai (young female bondservants) as it unfolded in British Malaya, and challenges the overemphasis on Hong Kong as the primary focus of mui tsai scholarship. While the mui tsai system was defended as a time-honoured Chinese tradition, this paper uses new material to show that trans-racial considerations figured prominently in mui tsai abolition in Malaya, particularly in helping to recast it as a wider problem of child welfare. It is argued that this neglected aspect of mui tsai abolition only comes clearly to light in the Malayan case; for only in the intensely multi-racial conditions of peninsular Malaya could the question be asked: ‘Do you own non-Chinese mui tsai?’

Caste and power: An ethnography in West Bengal, India

Abstract: This paper explores the institution of caste and its operation in a micro-level village setting of West Bengal, an Indian state, where state politics at grass roots level is vibrant with functioning local self-government and entrenched political parties. This ethnographic study reveals that caste relations and caste identities have overarching dimensions in the day-to-day politics of the study villages. Though caste almost ceases to operate in relation to strict religious strictures, under economic compulsion the division of labour largely coincides with caste division. In the cultural–ideological field, the concept of caste-hierarchy seems to continue as an influencing factor, even in the operation of leftist politics.

Beyond Conversion and Sanskritisation: Articulating an Alternative Dalit Agenda in East Punjab*

Abstract: Given different socio-economic structures, and acute landlessness among the Dalits of East Punjab, the agendas of conversion to neo-Buddhism and sanskritisation, the two most popular Dalit social mobility models in India, have failed to strike a cord among the Dalits in this border state of northwest India. But that does not imply that Dalits of Punjab have failed in improving their social status. On the contrary, they have been very vocal in their assertions for social justice and dignity, and pressing for a due share in the local structures of power; a clear indication of a significant surge of Dalit social mobility in Punjab. The question that still remains largely unexplored, however, relates to the patterns of Dalit social mobility in Punjab that have emerged independently of the agendas of conversion to neo-Buddhism and sanskritisation. The study aims to map out the contours of an emerging alternative Dalit agenda in Punjab, which is conspicuous by its absence in existing Dalit studies, and examines its catalytic role in enhancing the legitimacy and effectiveness of increasingly visible Dalit social mobility in the state. The paper concludes by visualising the possibility of an articulation and assertion of a similar alternative Dalit agenda through highly contentious democratic politics in other parts of India, where the archetypical agendas of conversion and sanskritisation have either failed to deliver social justice and dignity or could not simply appeal to the local Dalit population.

Spatial Inequity and National Territory: Remapping 1905 in Bengal and Assam*

Abstract: In 1905, Viceroy Nathaniel Curzon applied well-worn principles of imperial order to reorganize northeastern regions of British India, bringing the entire Meghna-Brahmaputra river basin into one new administrative territory: the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. He thereby launched modern territorial politics in South Asia by provoking an expansive and ultimately victorious nationalist agitation to unify Bengal and protect India's territorial integrity. This movement and its economic programme (swadeshi) expressed Indian nationalist opposition to imperial inequity. It established a permanent spatial frame for Indian national thought. It also expressed and naturalized spatial inequity inside India, which was increasing at the time under economic globalization. Spatial inequities in the political economy of uneven development have animated territorial politics in South Asia ever since. A century later, another acceleration of globalization is again increasing spatial inequity, again destabilizing territorial order, as nationalists naturalize spatial inequity in national territory and conflicts erupt from the experience of living in disadvantaged places. Remapping 1905 in the long twentieth century which connects these two periods of globalization, spanning eras of empire and nation, reveals spatial dynamics of modernity concealed by national maps and brings to light a transnational history of spatial inequity shared by Bangladesh and Northeast India.

Connecting People: A Central Asian Sufi network in turn-of-the-century Istanbul

Abstract: The role of Sufi networks in facilitating trans-imperial travel and the concomitant social and political connections associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca is often mentioned in the literature on Ottoman-Central Asian relations, yet very little is known about how these networks operated or the people who patronized them. This paper focuses on the Sultantepe Ozbekler Tekkesi, a Naqshbandi lodge in Istanbul that was a primary locus of Ottoman state interactions with Central Asians and a major hub of Central Asian diasporic networks. It departs from an exclusive focus on the experiences of elites, to which much of the conventional historiography on Ottoman-Central Asian relations has confined itself, and examines the butchers and bakers, craftsmen and students who set out on the hajj to Mecca in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on sources from the private archive of this lodge, the paper reconstructs the experiences of a diverse range of remarkably mobile actors and explores the myriad ways in which this Ottoman-administered institution facilitated their travel to and from Mecca. Through its focus on the conduits and mediators, the structures and buildings—the actual sites—where connections were forged, the paper sheds light on the role that such state-administered Sufi lodges played in delivering on the paternalistic rhetoric and system of sultanic charity that was an integral part of late Ottoman politics and society.

Competitions for Resources: Partition's Evacuee Property and the Sustenance of Corruption in Pakistan

Abstract: This paper explores the part that the redistribution of evacuee property—the property abandoned by departing Hindus and Sikhs during the mass migrations after Partition—played in the institutionalization of corruption in Pakistan. By drawing on hitherto unexplored sources, including Pakistan's Rehabilitation Department papers, local police files and court records, it highlights the schemes of illegal appropriation, misappropriation, and paints a wholly convincing portrait of the scramble for millions of rupees worth of abandoned property in the towns and countryside of West Punjab. It shows how politicians, bureaucrats, powerful local notables and enterprising refugee groups grabbed properties, mainly by bribing officers charged with allocating them to incoming refugees, or by utilizing their personal contacts. The paper argues that the fierce competition for resources and temptations for evacuee property encouraged the emergence of a ‘corruption’ discourse which not only contributed to an atmosphere that was detrimental to democratic consolidation in the early years of Pakistan's history, but also justified later military intervention. This not only adds to the empirical knowledge of Partition and its legacies, but also makes a significant contribution towards our understanding of the transitional state in Pakistan.

‘Enough of the Great Napoleons!’ Raja Mahendra Pratap's Pan-Asian Projects (1929–1939)

Abstract: This paper traces a set of interlinked Asianist networks through the activities of Mahendra Pratap, an Indian revolutionary exile who spent the majority of his life at various key anti-imperialist sites in Asia. Pratap envisioned a unified Asia free from colonial powers, but should be regarded as an anti-imperialist first and a nationalist second—he was convinced that India's independence would materialize naturally as a by-product of a federated Asia. Through forging strategic alliances in places as diverse as Moscow, Kabul, and Tokyo, he sought to achieve his goal of a united ‘Pan-Asia’. In his view, Pan-Asia would be the first step towards a world federation, in which all the continents would become provinces in a new world order. His thought was an intricate patchwork of internationalist ideas circulating in the opening decades of the twentieth century, and his travels and political activities are viewed in this context. Pratap's exploration of the relationship between the local, the regional, and the global, from an Asian perspective, was one of many ways in which Asian elites and non-elites challenged the legitimacy of the political order in the interwar years.

‘A Railway to the Moon’: The post-histories of a Sri Lankan railway line*

Abstract: This paper takes as its subject the 1905 opening and 1990 closure of the Northern Railway Line, the major Sri Lankan railway which ran the length of the island from south to north. It argues that it can been seen as a social compact in which the life of the individual, the community, and the state became integrally intertwined. It focuses on two dimensions of what the Northern Railway Line enabled in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon): first, a physical and symbolic representation of stateness, and, secondly, the pursuit of mundane everyday life. These are embedded within Sri Lanka's landscapes and histories of colonial and post-colonial rule, and the ethnic conflict, riots, and war which inextricably shaped the railway's journeys and passengers. Railways are more often thought of as large-scale, high-tech artefacts rather than the smaller everyday technologies that are the themes of other papers in this special issue. However, this paper highlights the ways in which railways also make particular kinds of everyday life possible and how, in being woven into routine daily and weekly journeys, the Northern Railway Line came to intertwine the changing circumstances and histories of its mainly Tamil passengers within an increasingly ethnicized national landscape. In the aftermath of its closure, the railway has now come to symbolize a desire for a return to the normalcy of the past, an aspiration to an everyday experience that younger generations have never had, and which has, in consequence, become a potent force. . . . the Northern Railway Line to be opened tomorrow would be a great boon to the Jaffnese in and out of Jaffna. . . it has become possible to travel to Jaffna in a single day. . . At last the railway which was characterized as a ‘tantalising vision’ by a previous Governor and ‘a railway to the moon’, by a quondam Colonial Secretary, has become a fait accompli.1This line has been completely destroyed between Vavuniya and Kankesanthurai (KKS) a track length of 160km. . . The Northern Railway Line is the main line connecting Colombo with Jaffna. . . the third largest town in Sri Lanka prior to the conflict and the Northern Railway Line was in high demand from both passengers and freight. There is a great sentiment amongst the people of the north for restoration.2

‘To Raise the Savage to a Higher Level’: The Westernization of Nagas and their Culture

Abstract: Westernization is a pervasive modern phenomenon. Its impact is more pervasive and pernicious than many people are aware and/or willing to admit. The spread of the dominant Western culture has caused a gradual demise of many peripheral cultures. The incursion of Western agents into Naga soil, beginning with British military conquest and American missionary intrusion, has resulted in a significant influence and westernization of Nagas and their culture and worldview. Consequently, it is almost a cliche to assert that since colonial contact the long-evolved Naga traditional values are being replaced by Western values. Today, the literal colonization of Nagas by the imperial West has ended, but the process of westernization is continuing, thanks to the ongoing influence being exerted by modern media, technology and other trends of globalization. My objective in this paper is not to highlight the ‘form’ or ‘material’ aspect of the culture, such as clothing (although mimicry in this area is almost faultless among a large section of Nagas), rather, my goal is to discuss the current state of mindset and fundamental cultural structures of the Nagas that have resulted from the adjustments in the lives and minds of the people because of the imposition of westernization. In fact, it is more than merely a process of adjustment consequent upon conquest, it is an extensive overhauling of cultural institutions, values and practices. I will underscore the westernization of some basic social structures and the mindset of the people.

‘Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong’: Emergency Powers, Administration of Justice and the Turbulent Year of 1967*

Abstract: The rule of law has always been cherished as one of the key institutions central to the successful transformation of Hong Kong from ‘a barren rock’ into a global city. The colonial administration's respect for the principles of the rule of law, however, has been tested by sporadic political turbulence during the 150 years of British rule. Due process of law and other key principles of English laws have been compromised by political expediency when the colonizers felt threatened by challenges from various sources. The 1967 Riots was one of those difficult times. Despite the facade of public support for firmness against disturbances enjoyed by the colonial government, the exercise of some of these emergency powers, particularly the powers to detain and deport, remained highly controversial. With normalization of the Anglo-Chinese relationship in mind, the confrontation prisoners constituted a stumbling block for renewing the friendship with Beijing. The various attempts made by London at pressurizing the Hong Kong government for early release of these prisoners attest to the prevalence of political expediency over the respect for the rule of law under colonial rule.

China's Corporate Governance: Emerging Issues and Problems

Abstract: As China approaches economic superpower status, its need to achieve considerably higher standards of corporate governance is becoming paramount. Despite impressive recent advances in its capital and stock exchange markets, the on-going overhang of state ownership in its former state-owned enterprises, together with an unwieldy and ineffective dual board governance system, has left China facing major corporate governance problems that will deter the private investment necessary for its continued growth. This paper illustrates these problems, and suggests possible reforms that will provide the foundation for the efficient further development of China's capital markets that is needed to help China become a major economic superpower.

Everyday Technology in South and Southeast Asia: An introduction

Abstract: That technology matters—and matters profoundly—to the humanities and social sciences is no longer in dispute. But exactly how it informs our understanding of society, now and in the past, remains a matter of scholarly contention. It might be argued that, as the history and sociology of technology moves away from its principal point of origin in the study of Euro-American societies, the questions that technology poses have, if only by virtue of their relative novelty, a particular resonance for the constituent regions of modern Asia—and not least for the societies of South and Southeast Asia that form the subject of this special issue. It is not a question of adopting an approach as unsubtle and outmoded as technological determinism, or of simply extending to one corner of the Asian landmass a set of ‘global’ theories and histories, with technology as their underpinning, already established and familiar in other contexts. Rather, it is a case of finding and developing a perspective on technology which helps to illuminate the inner histories and local narratives of these regions and which brings to the wider discussion of technology something distinctive, distilled from the outlook and experience of one part of the non-Western world. A desire to move beyond scholarship's still-dominant paradigms of colonialism, nationalism, and development, to explore the multivalent nature of ‘everyday life’ and enquire into ‘the social life of things’ as locally constituted, to examine modernity's diverse material forms, technological manifestations, and ideological configurations, to locate the regional roots as well as the exogenous origins of social change and cultural transformation, to situate subaltern experience alongside middle class mores and elite appropriation—all these interlocking considerations have begun to form part of a collective inquiry into the technological histories and cultures of South and Southeast Asia. A scholarly search is clearly under way to establish new methodologies and meanings, new contexts, and conjunctures, which will inform and reinvigorate the history, sociology, anthropology, and geography of these regions and redefine their place within the burgeoning field of science and technology studies.

Small Machines in the Garden: Everyday technology and revolution in the Mekong Delta

Abstract: Twentieth-century industrialization in the agricultural landscapes of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam took a very different form from other places, characterized less by a continuous spread of large-scale technology than by its destruction in mid-century and the subsequent spread of small technology which powered scooters, water pumps, and boats. The numbers of these portable motors, an everyday technology in 1960, rose from a few thousand units in 1963 to millions in the present day. The colonial and post-colonial state in Vietnam played a key role in the demise of large technology and, ultimately, of the water infrastructure. Its failures during wartime spurred farmers to adopt cheap, small engines to survive; however, the state's role was complex during this time. Several key factors, including the influence of American aid programmes and the contributions of Taiwanese agricultural advisers, especially those pushing high-yield rice, favoured the adoption of small engines. From an ecological viewpoint, the post-1960 explosion in the use of small motors, especially as water pumps, has brought people and states in Southeast Asia to an ecological impasse as unrestricted use has impacted on water tables, salinity levels, and the long-term sustainability of agriculture in many places. This paper examines the state's indirect role in shaping this silent revolution, and it considers the political and ideological factors underpinning its history.

The History of a Legend: Accounting for Popular Histories of Revolutionary Nationalism in India

Abstract: Narratives about the revolutionary movement have largely been the preserve of the popular domain in India, as Christopher Pinney has recently pointed out. India's best-known revolutionary, Bhagat Singh—who was executed by the British in 1931 for his role in the Lahore Conspiracy Case—has been celebrated more in posters, colourful bazaar histories and comic books than in academic tomes. These popular formats have established a hegemonic narrative of his life that has proved to be resistant to subsequent interventions as new materials, such as freshly-declassified intelligence reports and oral history testimonies, come to light. This paper accounts for why Bhagat Singh's life story has predominantly prevailed in the domain of the popular, with special reference to the secrecy of the revolutionary movement and the censure and censorship to which it was subjected in the 1930s.

An information war waged by merchants and missionaries at Canton : the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, 1834-1839

Abstract: This paper explores the efforts and impact of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China (1834–1839), which existed during the five years before the First Opium War. It contends that the Society represented a third form of British engagement with the Chinese, alongside the diplomatic attempts of 1793 and 1816, and the military conflict of 1839–1842. The Society waged an ‘information war’ to penetrate the information barrier that the Qing had established to contain European trade and missions. The foreigners in Canton believed they were barred from further access to China because the Chinese had no information on the true character of the Europeans. Thus, they prepared ‘intellectual artillery’ in the form of Chinese language publications, especially on world geography, to distribute among the Chinese, in the hope that this effort would familiarize the Chinese with the science and art of Westerners and thereby cultivate respect and a welcoming atmosphere. The war metaphor was conceived, and the information war was waged, in the periphery of the British informal empire in Canton, but it contributed to the conceptualization of war against China, both in Canton and in Britain, in the years before actual military action. Behind the rhetoric of war and knowledge diffusion in Canton, lay a convergence of interests between merchants and missionaries, which drove both to employ information and military power to further their shared aim of opening China up for trade and proselytizing.

The absent piece of skin: Gendered, racialized and territorial inscriptions of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war

Abstract: This paper addresses how the wombs of women and the absent skin on the circumcised penises of men become the predominant sites on which racialized and gendered discourses operating during the Bangladesh War are inscribed. This is explored by examining instances of sexual violence by Pakistani soldiers and their local Bengali collaborators. The prevalence of these discourses in colonial documents about the Bengali Muslims underscores the role of history, the politics of identity and in the process, establishes its link with the rapes of Bangladeshi women and men. Through this, the relationship between sexual violence and historical contexts is highlighted. I locate the accounts of male violations by the West Pakistani army within the historical and colonial discourses relating to the construction of the Bengali Muslim and its intertextual, contemporary citational references in photographs and interviews. I draw on Judith Butler's and Marilyn Strathern's work on gendering and performativity to address the citational role of various practices of discourses of gender and race within colonial documents and its application in a newer context of colonization and sexual violence of women and men during wars. The role of photographs and image-making is intrinsic to these practices. The open semiotic of the photographs allows an exploration of the territorial identities within these images and leads to traces of the silence relating to male violations. Through an examination of the silence surrounding male sexual violence vis-a-vis the emphasis on the rape of women in independent Bangladesh, it is argued that these racialized and gendered discourses are intricately associated to the link between sexuality and the state in relation to masculinity.