This article aims to explore knowledge co-production through a critical (and self-critical) reflection of experiences with doing evaluation within the Fostering Multi-Lateral Knowledge Networks of Transdisciplinary Studies to Tackle Global Challenges (KNOTS) project. KNOTS started as a collaborative project to explore the possibilities and increase the expertise of seven institutions from Europe and Southeast Asia in teaching a transdisciplinary approach at their higher education institutions. Planned as a capacity-building tool for higher education, its main objectives were to create a teaching manual and to es- tablish sustainable networks and knowledge hubs in this field of knowledge production. This was to be achieved mainly by means of summer schools and fieldtrips in Southeast Asia, which would enable learning through practical application of the knowledge developed. The realization of this ambitious conceptual formulation turned out to be pretty complex and this holds for the very process of evaluation itself as well. We discuss and illustrate the specific problems of a strict evaluation in such a complex transdisciplinary project. The notorious complexity of interdisciplinary and the more transdisciplinary projects was further increased by the intercultural, respective, transcultural dimension involved. Topics discussed include structurally immanent difficulties, unintended effects of financial and political constraints, complications caused by hierarchies and language, and effects of cultural differences, especially different university science cultures. In the form of lessons learned during the evaluation process, we give some hints for the development and implementation of the transdisciplinary approach as a new tool for reaching socially relevant knowledge, especially in cross-cultural settings.
{"title":"Linking European and Southeast Asian Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production: Lessons Learnt by Doing Evaluation","authors":"F. Seemann, Christoph Antweiler","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0045","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to explore knowledge co-production through a critical (and self-critical) reflection of experiences with doing evaluation within the Fostering Multi-Lateral Knowledge Networks of Transdisciplinary Studies to Tackle Global Challenges (KNOTS) project. KNOTS started as a collaborative project to explore the possibilities and increase the expertise of seven institutions from Europe and Southeast Asia in teaching a transdisciplinary approach at their higher education institutions. Planned as a capacity-building tool for higher education, its main objectives were to create a teaching manual and to es- tablish sustainable networks and knowledge hubs in this field of knowledge production. This was to be achieved mainly by means of summer schools and fieldtrips in Southeast Asia, which would enable learning through practical application of the knowledge developed. The realization of this ambitious conceptual formulation turned out to be pretty complex and this holds for the very process of evaluation itself as well. We discuss and illustrate the specific problems of a strict evaluation in such a complex transdisciplinary project. The notorious complexity of interdisciplinary and the more transdisciplinary projects was further increased by the intercultural, respective, transcultural dimension involved. Topics discussed include structurally immanent difficulties, unintended effects of financial and political constraints, complications caused by hierarchies and language, and effects of cultural differences, especially different university science cultures. In the form of lessons learned during the evaluation process, we give some hints for the development and implementation of the transdisciplinary approach as a new tool for reaching socially relevant knowledge, especially in cross-cultural settings.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76538257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The aim of the paper is to discuss and to reflect on the experiences and challenges encountered during the North-South capacity building project on transdisciplinarity, KNOTS (Fostering Multi-Lateral Knowledge Networks of Transdisciplinary Studies to Tackle Global Challenges), which was financed by the EU through the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education program. Despite the large body of literature on transdisciplinary approaches and projects, not many studies exist that discuss both the political and the power dimensions within transdisciplinary endeavors, especially not from a social science perspective. Based on the experiences, challenges, and progress over the course of the project, I will analyze how power relations influenced and structured KNOTS. I argue that the success of transdisciplinary North-South collaborations depends very much on awareness of power hierarchies, reflexivity, and positionality as well as different understandings of knowledge. Although differences will be highlighted regarding, for example, the aims of transdisciplinarity or the role of different understandings of science and knowledge, the paper does not aim to increase skepticism regarding transdisciplinarity. Instead, the intent of the reflections is to increase awareness of the influences of power structures and relations in transdisciplinarity projects, especially North-South collaboration projects.
{"title":"Transdisciplinarity ‘Meets’ Power Structures: Challenges and Experiences of a Capacity Building Project on Transdisciplinarity","authors":"Petra Dannecker","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0042","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of the paper is to discuss and to reflect on the experiences and challenges encountered during the North-South capacity building project on transdisciplinarity, KNOTS (Fostering Multi-Lateral Knowledge Networks of Transdisciplinary Studies to Tackle Global Challenges), which was financed by the EU through the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education program. Despite the large body of literature on transdisciplinary approaches and projects, not many studies exist that discuss both the political and the power dimensions within transdisciplinary endeavors, especially not from a social science perspective. Based on the experiences, challenges, and progress over the course of the project, I will analyze how power relations influenced and structured KNOTS. I argue that the success of transdisciplinary North-South collaborations depends very much on awareness of power hierarchies, reflexivity, and positionality as well as different understandings of knowledge. Although differences will be highlighted regarding, for example, the aims of transdisciplinarity or the role of different understandings of science and knowledge, the paper does not aim to increase skepticism regarding transdisciplinarity. Instead, the intent of the reflections is to increase awareness of the influences of power structures and relations in transdisciplinarity projects, especially North-South collaboration projects.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74940179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, we reflect upon our role as researchers embedded in humanities in the KNOTS project. In the course of the project, we noticed various misapprehensions among both staff and students stemming, among others, form different cultural, political, and educational backgrounds. While a diversity of inputs and perspectives is considered an advantage for transdisciplinary projects, cooperation among actors with various backgrounds can also be challenging. Based on our observations and previous experience living and working in Vietnam, we created a session focusing on ethics for the last summer school in Ho Chi Minh City. We decided to bring participants’ attention to research ethics and issues of cross-cultural communication, and suggested reflection and discussion as a coping strategy. In the course of a three years long mutual learning process, we realized that striving to create a common understanding of research ethics and cross-cultural awareness is an indispensable element of teaching and doing transdisciplinary research in a multicultural environment.
{"title":"Ethics and the Role of Humanities in Transdisciplinary Research? A Short Reflection on the KNOTS Project","authors":"B. Nováková, Marta Lopatková","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0043","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we reflect upon our role as researchers embedded in humanities in the KNOTS project. In the course of the project, we noticed various misapprehensions among both staff and students stemming, among others, form different cultural, political, and educational backgrounds. While a diversity of inputs and perspectives is considered an advantage for transdisciplinary projects, cooperation among actors with various backgrounds can also be challenging. Based on our observations and previous experience living and working in Vietnam, we created a session focusing on ethics for the last summer school in Ho Chi Minh City. We decided to bring participants’ attention to research ethics and issues of cross-cultural communication, and suggested reflection and discussion as a coping strategy. In the course of a three years long mutual learning process, we realized that striving to create a common understanding of research ethics and cross-cultural awareness is an indispensable element of teaching and doing transdisciplinary research in a multicultural environment.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78396722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thai Baan research was developed in the late 1990s as a counter-hegemonic, emancipatory means of knowledge production. Originally developed in the context of protests against a hydropower project, it aims at empowering socially and economically marginalized actors to create and represent their own knowledge and to regain authority in social struggles. This decolonial methodology, conceptualized by Thai academics in collaboration with non-academic actors, has remained largely unnoticed by Northern collaborative or transdisciplinary debates. Transdisciplinary research, although engaged in collaborative research designs, often remains silent on issues of power imbalances as constitutive of research processes. Criticizing the compartmentalization and limitation of academic knowledge production, transdisciplinarity realigns the scientific system of knowledge production to deal with ‘real-world problems’. During the last three decades, transdisciplinarity has unfolded into a collaborative and integrative methodology implemented in a number of fields, such as sustainability, public health, and development planning. This article systematically introduces Thai Baan and transdisciplinarity as two approaches to collaborative research practice. It introduces the context of their emergence, sheds light on the respective notions of knowledge and science, and discusses their respective methodological designs. It is argued that both would benefit from a stronger epistemological foundation in decolonizing, liberating philosophies of science to enhance collaborative action, overcome North-South divisions, and foster global dialogues in emancipatory knowledge production.
{"title":"Thai Baan Methodology and Transdisciplinarity as Collaborative Research Practices: Common Ground and Divergent Directions","authors":"Alexandra Heis, C. Vaddhanaphuti","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0040","url":null,"abstract":"Thai Baan research was developed in the late 1990s as a counter-hegemonic, emancipatory means of knowledge production. Originally developed in the context of protests against a hydropower project, it aims at empowering socially and economically marginalized actors to create and represent their own knowledge and to regain authority in social struggles. This decolonial methodology, conceptualized by Thai academics in collaboration with non-academic actors, has remained largely unnoticed by Northern collaborative or transdisciplinary debates. Transdisciplinary research, although engaged in collaborative research designs, often remains silent on issues of power imbalances as constitutive of research processes. Criticizing the compartmentalization and limitation of academic knowledge production, transdisciplinarity realigns the scientific system of knowledge production to deal with ‘real-world problems’. During the last three decades, transdisciplinarity has unfolded into a collaborative and integrative methodology implemented in a number of fields, such as sustainability, public health, and development planning. This article systematically introduces Thai Baan and transdisciplinarity as two approaches to collaborative research practice. It introduces the context of their emergence, sheds light on the respective notions of knowledge and science, and discusses their respective methodological designs. It is argued that both would benefit from a stronger epistemological foundation in decolonizing, liberating philosophies of science to enhance collaborative action, overcome North-South divisions, and foster global dialogues in emancipatory knowledge production.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82866874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing upon qualitative interviews, this article narrates central controversies and conflicts that scholars working in the field of “development” face in their daily work. Based on how these conflicts and controversies have been reconstructed, I place them in the discourse on transdisciplinarity, drawing into question the claim to authority and novelty around the term “transdisciplinarity” that Western institutions have attributed themselves with in recent years. Finally, I turn to the question of collaboration: How can transdisciplinary projects deal with the fact of pluralism on the one hand and the necessity to work towards shared problem definitions, solutions, and strategies on the other? In this context, I make a case against transdisciplinarity’s often-held conceptions of harmony, comprehensiveness and total systems as well as unity and for compromise, partiality and joint contextual strategies. The “art of deliberation”, thus, replaces the notion of transcendence as a central competence of transdisciplinary scholars.
{"title":"Conflict, Controversy, Compromise, and Compression: The Pragmatics of Transdisciplinary (Development) Projects","authors":"Richard Bärnthaler","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0038","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing upon qualitative interviews, this article narrates central controversies and conflicts that scholars working in the field of “development” face in their daily work. Based on how these conflicts and controversies have been reconstructed, I place them in the discourse on transdisciplinarity, drawing into question the claim to authority and novelty around the term “transdisciplinarity” that Western institutions have attributed themselves with in recent years. Finally, I turn to the question of collaboration: How can transdisciplinary projects deal with the fact of pluralism on the one hand and the necessity to work towards shared problem definitions, solutions, and strategies on the other? In this context, I make a case against transdisciplinarity’s often-held conceptions of harmony, comprehensiveness and total systems as well as unity and for compromise, partiality and joint contextual strategies. The “art of deliberation”, thus, replaces the notion of transcendence as a central competence of transdisciplinary scholars.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81763058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pavin Chachavalpongpun is an associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University. He has published extensively on Thailand and Southeast Asian politics. He is also politically active and does not shy away from discussing and criticizing the monarchy, which for a long time was taboo – in academia as well as in political campaigns. In April 2020, Prof. Pavin Chachavalpongpun founded the Facebook group Royalists Marketplace (รอยลลสตมารเกตเพลส). The name alludes to other Facebook groups, like the Chulalongkorn Marketplace or Thammasat Marketplace, which were set up by former students of those universities as platforms for selling and purchasing items, and socializing in times of the COVID-19 lockdown. Pavin’s group, however, is a persiflage of these initiatives. He developed a unique style of political communication, with a distinct mixture of memes, TikTok and Youtube videos, together with serious academic debates, which made his Facebook group the leading platform for criticism of the monarchy. This interview took place via Zoom between Kyoto and Cologne at the end of August 2020. Information on the dynamic developments that have unfolded since then has been added.
{"title":"“I Am not Here for Fun”: The Satirical Facebook Group Royalists Marketplace, Queer TikToking, and the New Democracy Movement in Thailand : An Interview With Pavin Chachavalpongpun","authors":"W. Schaffar","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0039","url":null,"abstract":"Pavin Chachavalpongpun is an associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University. He has published extensively on Thailand and Southeast Asian politics. He is also politically active and does not shy away from discussing and criticizing the monarchy, which for a long time was taboo – in academia as well as in political campaigns. In April 2020, Prof. Pavin Chachavalpongpun founded the Facebook group Royalists Marketplace (รอยลลสตมารเกตเพลส). The name alludes to other Facebook groups, like the Chulalongkorn Marketplace or Thammasat Marketplace, which were set up by former students of those universities as platforms for selling and purchasing items, and socializing in times of the COVID-19 lockdown. Pavin’s group, however, is a persiflage of these initiatives. He developed a unique style of political communication, with a distinct mixture of memes, TikTok and Youtube videos, together with serious academic debates, which made his Facebook group the leading platform for criticism of the monarchy. This interview took place via Zoom between Kyoto and Cologne at the end of August 2020. Information on the dynamic developments that have unfolded since then has been added.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77344924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vaccine hesitancy refers to the delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite vaccine availability. At its very core lies the problem of trust. Yet, there is very little research on the role of trust in vaccine hesitancy, particularly concerning its ideological dimension. This research aims to describe and explore how the online news discourse on the Dengvaxia vaccine controversy legitimizes a particular trust culture in Philippine society. For this purpose, the research adopts the theory of social trust propounded by the Polish sociologist Piotr Sztompka and links it to the study of news media using critical discourse analysis. This research is an interdisciplinary project that adopts various concepts and lenses from sociology, linguistics, media studies, and public health.
{"title":"Vaccine Hesitancy and the Cultural Politics of Trust in the Dengvaxia Controversy: A Critical Discourse-Ethnographic Study of Online News Content, Producers, and Audiences","authors":"K. P. Mendoza","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0037","url":null,"abstract":"Vaccine hesitancy refers to the delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite vaccine availability. At its very core lies the problem of trust. Yet, there is very little research on the role of trust in vaccine hesitancy, particularly concerning its ideological dimension. This research aims to describe and explore how the online news discourse on the Dengvaxia vaccine controversy legitimizes a particular trust culture in Philippine society. For this purpose, the research adopts the theory of social trust propounded by the Polish sociologist Piotr Sztompka and links it to the study of news media using critical discourse analysis. This research is an interdisciplinary project that adopts various concepts and lenses from sociology, linguistics, media studies, and public health.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84437824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
After the Tsunami represents an in-depth study of survivors of the 2004 tsunami in the badly-hit Indonesian province of Aceh. Annemarie Samuels interrogates disaster narratives and the efforts of survivors to remake everyday life in the midst of destruction, loss, humanitarian aid, and political change after decades of an armed conflict that was finally settled in August 2005. The book focuses on how people speak, or remain silent, about the tsunami and its aftermath, and adds important insights to the anthropological study of disasters by exploring how subjectivities are constructed through disaster narratives. Samuels presents her rich ethnographic material and interview excerpts, which were gathered in a period of more than ten years, in a clear and accessible language. This clarity is also reflected in the structure of the book. Its five chapters are organized in a rather linear time fashion, starting with before the tsunami, and finishing with Acehnese speculations about a future. The Introduction makes mention of social science framings of disasters, and sets Annemarie Samuels’ work as a continuation of subjectivities studies within psychological anthropology. The author argues that, although scholars call for processual and historically informed analysis of disasters, pointing at asymmetries of power and the social construction of vulnerabilities, for tsunami survivors the framing of the disaster is first and foremost that of an event. She asserts that “post-disaster recovery is not only a social and cultural process, but also a fundamentally subjective one” (p. 7). The author proposes narratives as a methodological device to examine how subjectivities and everyday life are made through them. Narratives, she writes, are also an epistemological device. For example, storytelling itself is an essential component of remaking. The first chapter looks at the immediate aftermath of the tsunami and centers survivors’ agency vis-à-vis Indonesian government representatives and foreign humanitarian aid. Especially with regard to the reconstruction phase, the author skillfully presents how the figure of the local broker and the proposal, that is local efforts to approach authorities in a bureaucratically acceptable form, mediate negotiations among citizens and authorities. Taking the issues of housing, citizen complaints of corruption, and time lags or inaction of government institutions, the author teases out the threads of patronage relations from the Rezensionen Book reviews
{"title":"Book Review: Samuels, A. (2019). After the Tsunami: Disaster Narratives and the Remaking of Everyday Life in Aceh.","authors":"Daniela Paredes Grijalva","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0036","url":null,"abstract":"After the Tsunami represents an in-depth study of survivors of the 2004 tsunami in the badly-hit Indonesian province of Aceh. Annemarie Samuels interrogates disaster narratives and the efforts of survivors to remake everyday life in the midst of destruction, loss, humanitarian aid, and political change after decades of an armed conflict that was finally settled in August 2005. The book focuses on how people speak, or remain silent, about the tsunami and its aftermath, and adds important insights to the anthropological study of disasters by exploring how subjectivities are constructed through disaster narratives. Samuels presents her rich ethnographic material and interview excerpts, which were gathered in a period of more than ten years, in a clear and accessible language. This clarity is also reflected in the structure of the book. Its five chapters are organized in a rather linear time fashion, starting with before the tsunami, and finishing with Acehnese speculations about a future. The Introduction makes mention of social science framings of disasters, and sets Annemarie Samuels’ work as a continuation of subjectivities studies within psychological anthropology. The author argues that, although scholars call for processual and historically informed analysis of disasters, pointing at asymmetries of power and the social construction of vulnerabilities, for tsunami survivors the framing of the disaster is first and foremost that of an event. She asserts that “post-disaster recovery is not only a social and cultural process, but also a fundamentally subjective one” (p. 7). The author proposes narratives as a methodological device to examine how subjectivities and everyday life are made through them. Narratives, she writes, are also an epistemological device. For example, storytelling itself is an essential component of remaking. The first chapter looks at the immediate aftermath of the tsunami and centers survivors’ agency vis-à-vis Indonesian government representatives and foreign humanitarian aid. Especially with regard to the reconstruction phase, the author skillfully presents how the figure of the local broker and the proposal, that is local efforts to approach authorities in a bureaucratically acceptable form, mediate negotiations among citizens and authorities. Taking the issues of housing, citizen complaints of corruption, and time lags or inaction of government institutions, the author teases out the threads of patronage relations from the Rezensionen Book reviews","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76193370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Volunteer tourism is an ever-growing phenomenon and a multi-million-pounds industry, particularly in developing countries. Despite the manifold criticism for its neo-colonial nature – self-centered volunteers who romanticize the Global South as ‘poor but happy’ and short-term projects that create dependency rather than local capacity – it can, at the same time, be seen as a key engine for socio-economic development. The privatization and neo-liberalization of development has led to governments and development agencies increasingly delegating responsibilities to the volunteer, who takes on the role of an agent of development – continuing in times of the SDGs-driven Agenda 2030. However, little research to date tries to understand volunteers’ perceived developmental impact to link it with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that characterize the current development agenda. This paper, therefore, offers one of the first attempts to bridge the gap between volunteers’ experiences, their felt impact, and the SDGs by drawing on ethno- graphic data gathered in a volunteer project teaching English in the North of Bali. Its aim is to start a discussion as to whether and under which conditions volunteer tourism can be a viable instrument in line with Agenda 2030. Findings identify a range of obstacles for volunteer tourism in the Balinese context to be in line with the SDGs. These include a lack of needed skills and feeling of uselessness on volunteers’ part, expectations that are set too high through marketing, a lack of coordination, and the fact that projects don’t focus on the marginalized. However, there are also indications that volunteer tourism holds strong potential to put the SDGs’ universality into practice, and hence dissolve some of the bina- ries between North and South, and rich and poor – thereby creating true reciprocal partnerships, rather than encounters that are characterized by neo-colonial Othering.
{"title":"Volunteer Tourists and the SDGs in Bali: Agents of Development or Redundant Holiday-Makers?","authors":"C. Dolezal, Dominyka Miezelyte","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0028","url":null,"abstract":"Volunteer tourism is an ever-growing phenomenon and a multi-million-pounds industry, particularly in developing countries. Despite the manifold criticism for its neo-colonial nature – self-centered volunteers who romanticize the Global South as ‘poor but happy’ and short-term projects that create dependency rather than local capacity – it can, at the same time, be seen as a key engine for socio-economic development. The privatization and neo-liberalization of development has led to governments and development agencies increasingly delegating responsibilities to the volunteer, who takes on the role of an agent of development – continuing in times of the SDGs-driven Agenda 2030. However, little research to date tries to understand volunteers’ perceived developmental impact to link it with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that characterize the current development agenda. This paper, therefore, offers one of the first attempts to bridge the gap between volunteers’ experiences, their felt impact, and the SDGs by drawing on ethno- graphic data gathered in a volunteer project teaching English in the North of Bali. Its aim is to start a discussion as to whether and under which conditions volunteer tourism can be a viable instrument in line with Agenda 2030. Findings identify a range of obstacles for volunteer tourism in the Balinese context to be in line with the SDGs. These include a lack of needed skills and feeling of uselessness on volunteers’ part, expectations that are set too high through marketing, a lack of coordination, and the fact that projects don’t focus on the marginalized. However, there are also indications that volunteer tourism holds strong potential to put the SDGs’ universality into practice, and hence dissolve some of the bina- ries between North and South, and rich and poor – thereby creating true reciprocal partnerships, rather than encounters that are characterized by neo-colonial Othering.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75511716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sex work is part of Thailand’s tourism-based economic development model. The country’s global reputation as a ‘queer paradise’ is an important factor shaping Thailand’s sex tourism and linking it to the global sex industry. This paper addresses transnational routes and networks of the global sex trade through Thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers who travel out of the country to Singapore for short periods to meet global demand. The research is based on in-depth interviews with 75 Thai transsexual sex workers who are working in districts such as Orchard Towers, Little India, and Geylang in Singapore. For some informants, Singapore is a final destination; for others, it is just a stop along the way to other places abroad. The findings show that the commercial sex trade involving these individuals is global in every sense, including the way it is funded, developed, structured, and organized.
{"title":"Gold Rush Abroad: The Trajectory of Singapore-Based Thai Transsexual (Male to Female) Sex Workers in Global Sex Tourism","authors":"Witchayanee Ocha","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0032","url":null,"abstract":"Sex work is part of Thailand’s tourism-based economic development model. The country’s global reputation as a ‘queer paradise’ is an important factor shaping Thailand’s sex tourism and linking it to the global sex industry. This paper addresses transnational routes and networks of the global sex trade through Thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers who travel out of the country to Singapore for short periods to meet global demand. The research is based on in-depth interviews with 75 Thai transsexual sex workers who are working in districts such as Orchard Towers, Little India, and Geylang in Singapore. For some informants, Singapore is a final destination; for others, it is just a stop along the way to other places abroad. The findings show that the commercial sex trade involving these individuals is global in every sense, including the way it is funded, developed, structured, and organized.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87800193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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