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A wide variety of topics engage the seventeen articles in this issue ranging from the increasing significance of technology and the creation of knowledge cultures, community effort in sustainable livelihood, issues of urbanization, memories as constructs of history, ethnicity and identity, to cross-cultural transformations. The variety of topics reflects the scholars’ concern for global developments as agents of change and socio-cultural reconstitutions. The papers also mine lessons from the past as a way of understanding the epistemic upheavals that challenge modern societies.
These articles are selected for their yield of significant data and the presence of insightful analyses made possible by months of immersion in the societies studied. They are insider-outsider readings of specific phenomena, validated by an insider’s disciplinal expertise and rendered objective by an outsider’s foreign gaze. Most importantly, each paper views an Asian reality through another Asian viewpoint, bringing into each study not only the honesty of the expert but also a cultural comprehension that is not Eurocentric, derived instead from a familiarity with the realities and cultures of the region.
The first three articles deal with the immeasurable strides taken by technology in the last few decades and its life changing effects on modern societies. A new elite of especially skilled experts has been created, as indicated in the study of Czarina Saloma, who acts as the prime movers in a knowledge society. The study looks into the cases of the Malaysian automotive industry and online education, identifying members of this elite in these two industries and showing how they promote and utilize glocal knowledge. Varaprasad Dolla examines the close links between state support and scientific advancement in China. It is a double-edged sword, according to this study, and the scientific future of China is dependent on the dynamics between the state and the scientific community. Nguyen Ky Anh draws lessons from Korea’s ICT success and searches for ways by which Vietnam can benefit from them.
A direct result of modernization is the urbanization of cities around the world, including the populous ones of Asia. The cities of Beijing and Shanghai are the sites chosen by Shrawan Kumar Acharya and Lim Poh Im respectively. Shrawan Kumar Acharya details the endangerment of the hutong and siheyuan in Beijing as heritage sites. City and national authorities privilege state edicts on development, city facelifts for the coming Olympics and big developers. Shanghai faces similar challenges, according to the study of Lim Poh Im. The dilemma between development and preservation continues to beg for new visionings and creative solutions in the growing city of Shanghai.
Communities are the main actors in the fishing issues of India and Sri Lanka and those of tourism in Thailand. Communities have decided to empower themselves by searching for informed approaches to their problems. Charu Gupta exposes the tragic consequences of unrefined borders in the fishing waters between India and Sri Lanka, bringing undue misery to both communities of fisherfolk. Wang Jianping documents efforts by Thai communities to take control of their future by protecting both nature and culture, opting for the protective tenets of a Community-based Eco-tourism (CBET).
History, an essential ingredient of nationhood, contains the narratives that unite the nation. But history, like all texts, is a construct and is therefore mediated. It highly relies on its narrators and what they prefer to remember. Memory therefore includes and excludes, warps and corrects. Sagari Chhabra recuperates the narratives of the Indian men and women in Southeast Asia who joined the forces of Subhash Chandra Bose during World War II, fired as they were by his goals and ideals. But the vicissitudes of war found them on the side of the Japanese fighting the British. The victory of the latter silenced these narratives, which are to be re-read with perspective decades later. Yoseph Yapi Taum looks at the forms of memorialization embodying Cambodian collective memories of the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime. These are memories of pain and death, but the memorials not only remind but also unexpectedly heal.
Ethnicity and identity are also a major concern in this crop of papers. Due to migration and diasporic expansion, colonial geopolitics and border divisions, many communities have lost ethnic certainty and have to deal with constructed yet still liminal identities. Smruti Pattanaik traces the historical travails of the Bangladesh identity. This Bengali community defends its language and culture against the increasing demands of Islamization and the political dominance of India and West Pakistan. Stephanus Suprajitno studies the reverse diaspora of the Chinese Indonesians who returned to China and found themselves in a liminal ethnic space. Simultaneously Chinese and Indonesian, these returnees tread the sensitive path of adaptation to a basically unknown China and preservation of a known Indonesian culture. Huang Xingqiu examines similarities in the kinship terms of the Mulao in China and the Laotian in Laos. This is to establish possible ethnic and historical connections between the two communities.
The next three articles examine the effects of cross-cultural exchange in the arts. They trace the happy crossings of artists and influences into other Asian territories. Indah Witiastuti sees the Kerala house as an aggregate of global architectural influences from Southeast Asia, China, Europe and other parts of India. Every structure and design in an eclectic Kerala house speaks of the harmonious blending of local imagination and foreign borrowing. Amitava Bhattacharya focuses on the visual artists of China who have enriched the painting traditions of India. These painters have crossed borders to share their own traditions and learn from their host’s aesthetic conventions. Both groups of artists influence each other and create new hybrid forms and styles. Helly Minarti’s substantial discussion of modern dance in China forwards the idea of transculturation which, as she has proven, has imbued a modern foreign dance form with a Chinese sensibility. Importations do not necessarily result in cultural disadvantages for the importee.For modern dance to develop, it needs state support and the Chinese state is just beginning to see the necessity.
In contrast, Indonesia has institutional and grassroots support for its performing arts, as shown in the last article in this issue. Suon Bun Rith discloses how the performing organizations in Indonesia can serve as a good model for the Cambodian performance field. Indonesian performers are given space and performance opportunities to preserve and hone their craft, two things Cambodian performers will be happy to have to pursue their art.
Lily Rose Tope
Editor
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