Pub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-7
A. Matthies
The purok system in the Philippines is promoted as a voluntary self-organization at the sub-village level which strengthens community resilience to natural hazards. In 2011, the system received the UN Sasakawa Award and gained prominence among the practitioner community. Based on a qualitative study in the municipality of San Francisco (Cebu province) from December 2014 to March 2015, the article elaborates on the achievements and challenges of the purok system. Striking merits encompass efficient and effective information dissemination and evacuation measurements between all levels of political administration that stem from the system’s remarkable enforcement of human and social capital. This is underpinned by a clear determination of roles and responsibility that is subsumed under the concept of accountability. However, the purok system faces internal challenges of maintenance and implies profound conceptual ambiguities regarding the notion of voluntarism and capabilities that favor clientelism. Nevertheless, the purok system clearly distinguishes itself from conventional community-based disaster risk management practices and implies potentials that are highly beneficial for strengthening resilience in disaster prone areas.
{"title":"Community-Based Disaster Risk Management in the Philippines: Achievements and Challenges of the Purok System","authors":"A. Matthies","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-7","url":null,"abstract":"The purok system in the Philippines is promoted as a voluntary self-organization at the sub-village level which strengthens community resilience to natural hazards. In 2011, the system received the UN Sasakawa Award and gained prominence among the practitioner community. Based on a qualitative study in the municipality of San Francisco (Cebu province) from December 2014 to March 2015, the article elaborates on the achievements and challenges of the purok system. Striking merits encompass efficient and effective information dissemination and evacuation measurements between all levels of political administration that stem from the system’s remarkable enforcement of human and social capital. This is underpinned by a clear determination of roles and responsibility that is subsumed under the concept of accountability. However, the purok system faces internal challenges of maintenance and implies profound conceptual ambiguities regarding the notion of voluntarism and capabilities that favor clientelism. Nevertheless, the purok system clearly distinguishes itself from conventional community-based disaster risk management practices and implies potentials that are highly beneficial for strengthening resilience in disaster prone areas.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90264586","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}
Pub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-1
Kristina Großmann, Martina Padmanabhan, S. Afiff
The contributions in this special issue are based on the general assumption that political and economic decisions always have an ecological impact and that societies have always transformed, (re-)produced, manufactured, and crafted nature. Environmental transformations are never socially neutral but are strongly connected to power relations (Görg, 2003). The enforcement of power over nature evolves in a dialectical process with the enforcement of power over humans (Pye, 2015). Furthermore, social, cultural, and political power asymmetries shape the production of knowledge, the definition of problems, and the search for solutions with regard to socio-ecological phenomena. Both gender and ethnicity are decisive factors in societal relations to nature. Gender constitutes a critical variable in human-nature relationships (Resurreccion & Elmhirst, 2008; Rocheleau, Slayter-Thomas, & Wangar, 1996) as does the category of ethnicity with its strong impact on group formation (Afiff & Lowe, 2007; Bertrand, 2004; Li, 2000). In this special issue we address how both categories interact and enforce each other in contested development processes, focusing on access, control, knowledge production, and identity-formation in struggles over land, nature, and natural resources.
{"title":"Gender, Ethnicity, and Environmental Transformations in Indonesia and Beyond","authors":"Kristina Großmann, Martina Padmanabhan, S. Afiff","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-1","url":null,"abstract":"The contributions in this special issue are based on the general assumption that political and economic decisions always have an ecological impact and that societies have always transformed, (re-)produced, manufactured, and crafted nature. Environmental transformations are never socially neutral but are strongly connected to power relations (Görg, 2003). The enforcement of power over nature evolves in a dialectical process with the enforcement of power over humans (Pye, 2015). Furthermore, social, cultural, and political power asymmetries shape the production of knowledge, the definition of problems, and the search for solutions with regard to socio-ecological phenomena. Both gender and ethnicity are decisive factors in societal relations to nature. Gender constitutes a critical variable in human-nature relationships (Resurreccion & Elmhirst, 2008; Rocheleau, Slayter-Thomas, & Wangar, 1996) as does the category of ethnicity with its strong impact on group formation (Afiff & Lowe, 2007; Bertrand, 2004; Li, 2000). In this special issue we address how both categories interact and enforce each other in contested development processes, focusing on access, control, knowledge production, and identity-formation in struggles over land, nature, and natural resources.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86043043","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}
Pub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-3
M. Haug
The increasing penetration of global capitalism, ambitious development efforts, and related environmental change have significantly transformed Kalimantan and its indigenous population, commonly referred to as Dayak, during the last decades. This article analyzes these processes from a gendered perspective and explores how gender relations among the Dayak, who generally are characterized by well-balanced gender relations, have been influenced by what is commonly referred to as ‘development’. A review of the existing literature shows that new asymmetries between men and women are emerging mainly due to different ways of inclusion in new economic systems. Based on research among the Dayak Benuaq, the article shows that far-reaching gender equality has been so far upheld within Benuaq society while gender gets interwoven with an increasing variety of inequalities. I argue that in order to capture this complexity, research on the gendered impacts of development should a) aim for a better understanding of the intertwinement of gender with other aspects, such as ethnicity, class, age, or education, b) pay more attention to how these aspects play out in different contexts, and c) differentiate more clearly between gender ideals, norms, and actual practice.
{"title":"Men, Women, and Environmental Change in Indonesia: The Gendered Face of Development among the Dayak Benuaq","authors":"M. Haug","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-3","url":null,"abstract":"The increasing penetration of global capitalism, ambitious development efforts, and related environmental change have significantly transformed Kalimantan and its indigenous population, commonly referred to as Dayak, during the last decades. This article analyzes these processes from a gendered perspective and explores how gender relations among the Dayak, who generally are characterized by well-balanced gender relations, have been influenced by what is commonly referred to as ‘development’. A review of the existing literature shows that new asymmetries between men and women are emerging mainly due to different ways of inclusion in new economic systems. Based on research among the Dayak Benuaq, the article shows that far-reaching gender equality has been so far upheld within Benuaq society while gender gets interwoven with an increasing variety of inequalities. I argue that in order to capture this complexity, research on the gendered impacts of development should a) aim for a better understanding of the intertwinement of gender with other aspects, such as ethnicity, class, age, or education, b) pay more attention to how these aspects play out in different contexts, and c) differentiate more clearly between gender ideals, norms, and actual practice.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82821505","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}
Pub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-5
Y. Winarto, C. Stigter, Muki Wicaksono
Science Field Shops (SFSs) are an example of a transdisciplinary educational commitment where farmers, scientists, and extension staff exchange knowledge on agrometeorology in dialogue form to better respond to climate change. How can scientists, farmers, and extension staff build up this transdisciplinary collaboration? How has the agrometeorological learning environment been institutionalized in several places in Indonesia? An interdisciplinary collaboration between agrometeorology and anthropology serves as basis for developing seven climate services that are provided in the SFSs. Through Knowledge Transfer and Communication Technologies, farmers have become active learners, researchers, and decision makers of their own responses to the consequences of climate change. Although such an approach proves efficient in improving the farmers’ knowledge and anticipation capability, the transdisciplinary collaboration with state authority needs to be overhauled to improve the process.
{"title":"Transdisciplinary Responses to Climate Change: Institutionalizing Agrometeorological Learning Through Science Field Shops in Indonesia","authors":"Y. Winarto, C. Stigter, Muki Wicaksono","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-5","url":null,"abstract":"Science Field Shops (SFSs) are an example of a transdisciplinary educational commitment where farmers, scientists, and extension staff exchange knowledge on agrometeorology in dialogue form to better respond to climate change. How can scientists, farmers, and extension staff build up this transdisciplinary collaboration? How has the agrometeorological learning environment been institutionalized in several places in Indonesia? An interdisciplinary collaboration between agrometeorology and anthropology serves as basis for developing seven climate services that are provided in the SFSs. Through Knowledge Transfer and Communication Technologies, farmers have become active learners, researchers, and decision makers of their own responses to the consequences of climate change. Although such an approach proves efficient in improving the farmers’ knowledge and anticipation capability, the transdisciplinary collaboration with state authority needs to be overhauled to improve the process.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80880752","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}
Pub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-10
Iris O’Rourke
{"title":"Book Review: Chandler, D., Cribb, R., & Narangoa, L. (Eds.). (2016). End of Empire. 100 Days in 1945 That Changed Asia and the World. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. ISBN 978-87-7694-183-3. i-vi + 346 pages.","authors":"Iris O’Rourke","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74712389","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}
Pub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-2
Kristina Großmann, Martina Padmanabhan, K. Braun
This article reviews the literature on the relationship between gender and ethnicity in Indonesia’s mining sector and outlines shortcomings and prospects for further research. Recent studies on mining and gender focus predominantly on women and how they are negatively affected by mining. Ethnicity, although a growing asset in struggles on environmental transformations, is hardly included in research on mining. The intertwinement of ethnicity and gender in elaborations on mining is often depicted in literature of development programs and environmental organizations in which indigenous women are homogenized as marginalized victims. We argue, however, for a multidimensional approach on mining that takes into account the institutionalization of gender and ethnicity in mining governance as well as the role of gender and ethnic identities. Feminist political ecology and institutional analysis are pointing the way for such an approach. Furthermore, other relevant categories such as class, age, or status should be considered in the analysis of the complex and multidimensional environmental transformations of the mining sector in Indonesia.
{"title":"Contested Development in Indonesia: Rethinking Ethnicity and Gender in Mining","authors":"Kristina Großmann, Martina Padmanabhan, K. Braun","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-2","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews the literature on the relationship between gender and ethnicity in Indonesia’s mining sector and outlines shortcomings and prospects for further research. Recent studies on mining and gender focus predominantly on women and how they are negatively affected by mining. Ethnicity, although a growing asset in struggles on environmental transformations, is hardly included in research on mining. The intertwinement of ethnicity and gender in elaborations on mining is often depicted in literature of development programs and environmental organizations in which indigenous women are homogenized as marginalized victims. We argue, however, for a multidimensional approach on mining that takes into account the institutionalization of gender and ethnicity in mining governance as well as the role of gender and ethnic identities. Feminist political ecology and institutional analysis are pointing the way for such an approach. Furthermore, other relevant categories such as class, age, or status should be considered in the analysis of the complex and multidimensional environmental transformations of the mining sector in Indonesia.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88786641","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}
Pub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-6
N. Reese
This article argues that communitarianism, as the prevalent citizenship paradigm in the Philippines, observable also in modest expectations towards government services among Filipinos and a high emphasis on individual and community action, can be used to explain the lack of political change in the Philippines. In its first part, the article presents data on the sense of citizenship and concepts of social rights and obligations among Filipinos by combining findings from a series of problem-centered interviews with young urban professionals and quantitative data collected within annual surveys by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) on government, social inequality, and citizenship. The second part of the article attributes these findings to everyday concepts of citizenship as ideal-typical state responsibility theories and modern citizenship paradigms. By including ethnographic data, it discovers significant traits of communitarianism in Philippine everyday life. This section goes on to present how communitarianism (with its inherent character of exclusivity) impedes a democratic culture and moreover, how it is unable to serve as a guiding social philosophy in unifying a large-scale society mainly consisting of citizens who are strangers ( ibang tao ) to each other. Nevertheless, in conclusion, the article suggests the possibility of deepening and broadening the sense of citizenship in the Philippine society and its respect for the stranger by drawing on elements of Filipino culture.
{"title":"“Only if You Really, Really Need It”: Social Rights Consciousness in the Philippines","authors":"N. Reese","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-6","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that communitarianism, as the prevalent citizenship paradigm in the Philippines, observable also in modest expectations towards government services among Filipinos and a high emphasis on individual and community action, can be used to explain the lack of political change in the Philippines. In its first part, the article presents data on the sense of citizenship and concepts of social rights and obligations among Filipinos by combining findings from a series of problem-centered interviews with young urban professionals and quantitative data collected within annual surveys by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) on government, social inequality, and citizenship. The second part of the article attributes these findings to everyday concepts of citizenship as ideal-typical state responsibility theories and modern citizenship paradigms. By including ethnographic data, it discovers significant traits of communitarianism in Philippine everyday life. This section goes on to present how communitarianism (with its inherent character of exclusivity) impedes a democratic culture and moreover, how it is unable to serve as a guiding social philosophy in unifying a large-scale society mainly consisting of citizens who are strangers ( ibang tao ) to each other. Nevertheless, in conclusion, the article suggests the possibility of deepening and broadening the sense of citizenship in the Philippine society and its respect for the stranger by drawing on elements of Filipino culture.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76192994","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}
Pub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-8
G. Stange
Arahmaiani is one of the best known contemporary Indonesian women artists. Her works, performances, and installations have been exhibited at 7 biennials and in a total of 29 countries. She has taught at universities in Australia, China, Indonesia, Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands. Arahmaiani is a politically committed artist. In her works, she addresses the reduction of human beings to consumers, which is on the rise all over the globe, as well as the discrimination against people on the grounds of gender, religion, and ethnicity. While the phenomena addressed in her art are always of a global nature, the majority of her works deal with cultural, social, and political realities of Indonesia. She views these as being threatened by an increasing politicization and essentialization of Islam, whose protagonists supplant the country’s diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious heritage with a purely Islamic interpretation of the Indonesian past. In this interview, conducted by Gunnar Stange in December 2016, Arahmaiani elaborates on the main themes she addresses in her art works as well as on current political, social, and environmental challenges in Indonesia.
{"title":"“I Don’t Want to Limit Myself to Binary Thinking”: An Interview With the Indonesian Artist Arahmaiani","authors":"G. Stange","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2017.1-8","url":null,"abstract":"Arahmaiani is one of the best known contemporary Indonesian women artists. Her works, performances, and installations have been exhibited at 7 biennials and in a total of 29 countries. She has taught at universities in Australia, China, Indonesia, Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands. Arahmaiani is a politically committed artist. In her works, she addresses the reduction of human beings to consumers, which is on the rise all over the globe, as well as the discrimination against people on the grounds of gender, religion, and ethnicity. While the phenomena addressed in her art are always of a global nature, the majority of her works deal with cultural, social, and political realities of Indonesia. She views these as being threatened by an increasing politicization and essentialization of Islam, whose protagonists supplant the country’s diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious heritage with a purely Islamic interpretation of the Indonesian past. In this interview, conducted by Gunnar Stange in December 2016, Arahmaiani elaborates on the main themes she addresses in her art works as well as on current political, social, and environmental challenges in Indonesia.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82628549","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}
Pub Date : 2016-12-30DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2016.2-2
P. Laungaramsri
Post-coup Thailand has witnessed a troubling shift toward censorship, surveillance, and suppression in cyberspace. With cyber security ranking prominently on the military’s agenda and the expansion of the military’s cyber intervention, the country’s online infrastructure has undergone politicization, securitization, and militarization. This paper argues that the militarization of cyberspace in Thailand represents the process in which cyber warfare capabilities have been integrated with other military forces and with support from the masses. This process has been effective through at least three significant mechanisms, including mass surveillance, surveillance by the masses, and normalization of surveillance. Social media have been turned into an absolute digital panopticon. Cyber dystopia, created by the 2014 coup and supported by the masses, has served to sustain a ‘state of exception’ not only within the territorial borders of the state, but also more importantly, within the virtual space of civil society. Cyber surveillance by the military and the masses has continued to jeopardize the already vulnerable Thai democracy.
{"title":"Mass Surveillance and the Militarization of Cyberspace in Post-Coup Thailand","authors":"P. Laungaramsri","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2016.2-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2016.2-2","url":null,"abstract":"Post-coup Thailand has witnessed a troubling shift toward censorship, surveillance, and suppression in cyberspace. With cyber security ranking prominently on the military’s agenda and the expansion of the military’s cyber intervention, the country’s online infrastructure has undergone politicization, securitization, and militarization. This paper argues that the militarization of cyberspace in Thailand represents the process in which cyber warfare capabilities have been integrated with other military forces and with support from the masses. This process has been effective through at least three significant mechanisms, including mass surveillance, surveillance by the masses, and normalization of surveillance. Social media have been turned into an absolute digital panopticon. Cyber dystopia, created by the 2014 coup and supported by the masses, has served to sustain a ‘state of exception’ not only within the territorial borders of the state, but also more importantly, within the virtual space of civil society. Cyber surveillance by the military and the masses has continued to jeopardize the already vulnerable Thai democracy.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78417241","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}
Pub Date : 2016-12-30DOI: 10.14764/10.ASEAS-2016.2-11
Zoltán Bódis
Book Review: Lwin, S. M. (2010). Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales. Amherst: Cambria Press. ISBN 978-1-60497-716-5. 178 pages.In order to properly evaluate Soe Marlar Lwin's book that is excellently structured, rich in references, and provides a well-chosen text selection, we need to give a short overview of the historical 'currents' in folktale research. European culture has been a 'cradle' for folktale research and by the 20th century a new interpretive approach, breaking away from this historicity, has been formed providing a universal interpretive framework independent of the European roots.1Taking a closer look at the historical changes considering the history of European tale research, we should distinguish between three different periods, all of which approach tales with a specific point of view. Therefore, each of them is associated with different aspects of folktales and the phenomena in tales. In the premodern period concepts, thought schemes originating from European Romanticism defined the essence of tales. For researches of the period, the most important task of folk culture when following the Herderian organic historical approach was considered to be the formation of identities of linguistic-cultural communities through the concept of nation based on folk culture, folk poetry, and especially folktales. Therefore, in accordance with their most significant aim, collecting and canonizing folktales resulted in the establishment of a set of texts (according to the latest research we should rather speak about the creation of these texts) - previously folktales were not regarded as part of high culture - by which a special value was bestowed upon folktales: On the one hand, preserving the traces of the mythical past of nations, folktale functioned as an inexhaustible archive (for the disciplines of the history of language and of folklore); on the other hand, it functioned as a model for contemporary literary production and national awakening that everywhere brought with itself the process of the literary tale becoming a special, priority genre.Those interpreting the modern period - partly due to the oral tradition seemingly being pushed to the background - were not interested in finding new tale texts; they rather turned to the interpretation of already existing (collected) texts from various aspects. The folktale text is separated from the concept of the national; attention is turned toward the universality of tales. This is how the interpretation of tales becomes the research of structures - the series of narrative elements as Proppean or archetypal reminiscences, as in the case of Jungian tale interpretations. In both cases folktale becomes interesting as a text that may carry a message for the community, remaining valid over a long period of time because it either activates the basic narrative desires of man ("Narrare necesse est!''), or the cathartic force hidden in recognizing and making conscious of world view structures id
{"title":"Book Review: Lwin, S. M.(2010). Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales.","authors":"Zoltán Bódis","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-2016.2-11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-2016.2-11","url":null,"abstract":"Book Review: Lwin, S. M. (2010). Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales. Amherst: Cambria Press. ISBN 978-1-60497-716-5. 178 pages.In order to properly evaluate Soe Marlar Lwin's book that is excellently structured, rich in references, and provides a well-chosen text selection, we need to give a short overview of the historical 'currents' in folktale research. European culture has been a 'cradle' for folktale research and by the 20th century a new interpretive approach, breaking away from this historicity, has been formed providing a universal interpretive framework independent of the European roots.1Taking a closer look at the historical changes considering the history of European tale research, we should distinguish between three different periods, all of which approach tales with a specific point of view. Therefore, each of them is associated with different aspects of folktales and the phenomena in tales. In the premodern period concepts, thought schemes originating from European Romanticism defined the essence of tales. For researches of the period, the most important task of folk culture when following the Herderian organic historical approach was considered to be the formation of identities of linguistic-cultural communities through the concept of nation based on folk culture, folk poetry, and especially folktales. Therefore, in accordance with their most significant aim, collecting and canonizing folktales resulted in the establishment of a set of texts (according to the latest research we should rather speak about the creation of these texts) - previously folktales were not regarded as part of high culture - by which a special value was bestowed upon folktales: On the one hand, preserving the traces of the mythical past of nations, folktale functioned as an inexhaustible archive (for the disciplines of the history of language and of folklore); on the other hand, it functioned as a model for contemporary literary production and national awakening that everywhere brought with itself the process of the literary tale becoming a special, priority genre.Those interpreting the modern period - partly due to the oral tradition seemingly being pushed to the background - were not interested in finding new tale texts; they rather turned to the interpretation of already existing (collected) texts from various aspects. The folktale text is separated from the concept of the national; attention is turned toward the universality of tales. This is how the interpretation of tales becomes the research of structures - the series of narrative elements as Proppean or archetypal reminiscences, as in the case of Jungian tale interpretations. In both cases folktale becomes interesting as a text that may carry a message for the community, remaining valid over a long period of time because it either activates the basic narrative desires of man (\"Narrare necesse est!''), or the cathartic force hidden in recognizing and making conscious of world view structures id","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84784028","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}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：