As a brown-skinned layman inhabitant, could I posit that we’re all those people squeezed between the slant-eyed yellows to the north and the Aryan-Dravidian lot to the west, and not of the blacks and whites of the south?
On the other hand there are also long cultural and historical links from pre-western days, when the old native empires criss-crossed most of insular and mainland SE Asia.
For pre-modern history even the concept of mainland Southeast Asia is too broad & cutting mainland Southeast Asia into three parallel West, Central & East areas as Lieberman does in Strange Parallels I doesn’t really work either.
One coherent pre-modern geographical unit of study would run from Sri Lanka (source point for Theravadin lineages) through the Bay of Bengal (Portuguese zone of influence for a time), Burma, the Shan states & into Yunnan with its Tai states.
The real problem is the insularity of thinking caused by the Southeast Asia idea, scholars use the limited pool of concepts originated in so-called “Southeast Asian Studies” such as the so-called “Mandala (Southeast Asian political model)” instead of using concepts of broader applicability such as the notion of “chieftainship” in political anthropology or anthropology, thus linking into a rich comparative literature stretching around the world (see review of the literature by R. Brian Ferguson “A Paradigm for the Study of War and Society (1999)” available for download at his Rutger’s webpage. 🙂
Again unflappably generous, “Good Intention”. As the best lies are effective buried in 95% truth, a lot of these “Foreign Aid” wannabe goodytwoshoes may very well be deluding themselves. But the spirit of AID isn’t anygoody about it.
There are as usual everywhere, main strategies.
First of all is to make sure the “natives” always feel “Inferior”. For a country like Burma it is so easy to do as there has been precious little opportunity to know the other lands and people. Indeed even for people living outside of the country still accept their own “inferior” status and are embarrassed as they are not “White enough”.
And then there is this universal trick of pitting against each others. Male versus female seems to be the easiest and most “profitable” way to screw a cohesive society to unravel. Gender equality, human rights.etc. all these shamelessly coming out the mouths of people living in 80,000 dollar a month Mi Casa penthouse.
And that ever helpful “education”. Mind you one cannot blame the “education” crowd. Like child abuse, they commit the same crime when they grow up. After all the “Education” was specifically “invented” the Rockefeller’s and Carnegie’s with Guggenheim’s as helpers. Medical education more so. Anyhow education is the nest way for this “Epistemic community” which is easily translated to recruit Maung Thaung Be’s (a lot of them are in Canberra since 2011) to work together to pickle the joint.
It is remarkable that after disastrous devastation of lands and societies in Latin America, Africa and some parts of Asia, the very same method can still be used to screw the precious little land left unspoiled. And the comprador bourgeoisie and “Epistemic community” alike welcome and usher it in.
[…] the ranks of the NLD. In testament to such appeasement, Suu Kyi decided prior to November to omit several prominent party members from the general election ballot papers, the common denominator being their active role in the 1988 Revolution, the […]
Did you see this little gem about there’s no word for vagina in the Burmese language?! You could equally say that there’s no ‘polite word’ for penis either in the Burmese language. But that was not convenient.
When we never even had different gender forms for the third person pronoun, only thu for both genders… not until some bright spark started, before independence probably, a direct translation from the English and coined the word thu-ma in written Burmese! Still it never caught on in speech to this day.
The Burmese are too damned friendly, deferential and susceptible to the imposition of ‘enlightenment’, meekly, gratefully and unquestioningly accepting Western perceptions and interpretations of their own society. They’d better wise up about this little gem of an expression: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I notice that you didn’t construct your “linguistic” comparison by suggesting that putting “pure French” or “true French” into scare quotes would be ridiculous.
That, of course, would be because, like the ridiculous notion of there being some “true Buddhism” or “pure Buddhism” that can be used as a cudgel with which to beat the superstitious and the constructivists simultaneously, there is no such qualified version of French that a linguist worth her salt would not find equally ridiculous.
Maybe you would do better to unearth a statement of the anti-amulet dogma from a “pure practitioner” or at least a “true” unpacking of the “metaphor of the Triple Gem”?
I appreciate the interesting pedigree Siani gives here for the Angel Dolls, and I agree that the pantheon of deities drawn from Indic, SEAsian and Chinese cosmologies is ever-growing. The dolls belong to a class of objects, of which there are many subsets, imbued with special powers, the Jatukham amulet being a particularly interesting example as it has morphed wildly through its history. BTW, there was much scoffing about the Jatukham because it was said to be not Buddhist even as its avid purchasers were Buddhists, and it is still being used to raise funds for monastery construction. It was not an image of the Buddha, but a deity conjured up in the late 1980s and marketed to fund the renovation of a provincial city pillar.
As Justin McDaniel and others have shown, people are indeed creating and improvising their own religious practices (demand), and someone is always nearby ready to craft attractive products and profit from them (supply). Or is it the other way around? But I don’t see how the practices outlined here can be described as the construction of “a cosmology from below, a powerful inversion of the traditional world order.” What does “below” mean even if there are dolls that fit many budgets?
The elephant in the room is race. Eyes similar to Chinese and Japanese, but skin distinctly browner. The paler-skinned people probably evolved from the browner, out of need for vitamin D as they moved north.
‘South East Asia’ is a good name because it contains no invitation to imperialists, unlike that disastrous descendant of 19th-century European ignorance ‘South China Sea’.
Prof. Pepinsky raises an interesting historical question that has some implications for the future.
While it seems likely that the area included in the SEAC in WWII provided a first approximation of the region, I suspect it was the Cold War fear of Communism after the war that more precisely defined it. The victory of Mao’s forces in China in 1949 certainly was a key factor.
In 1954 US President Eisenhower spoke of the “domino theory” that he felt put the countries of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines at risk. Each of these countries had either local Communist insurgencies or significant Communist political parties (Indonesia). That same year the term Southeast Asia was used for an anti-communist security pact — the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty. This treaty set up the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) based in Bangkok. It was, in some ways, intended to be similar to NATO, which was established in Europe due to fears of Soviet Communism. Although most of the SEATO members were not actually located in Southeast Asia (the USA, Pakistan, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia), their concerns focused on Eisenhower’s supposed “dominoes.”
In 1967 the Southeast Asia label was used for an organization of five of the non-Communist countries in the region — ASEAN. Again one motivation was fear of the extention of Chinese Communist influence and the need for regional cooperation to withstand it. As Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik put it, Southeast Asia needed to become “a region which can stand on its own feet, strong enough to defend itself against any negative influence from outside the region.” Although Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma were not initial members of ASEAN, the organization was partly focused on the struggles in those countries.
The region, long influenced by Chinese trade, culture and population movements, became defined, at least in part, by these efforts to limit the influence of what was seen as aggressive Chinese Communism. Although that fear was reduced by changes in China after Mao’s death, the need for regional cooperation against rising Chinese economic, as well as political influence, led to ASEAN’s expansion to include Burma and the Communist nations of Indo-China in the 1990s.
More recently, the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community was motivated, at least in part, by the perception that the countries of the region had to cooperate on trade and economics to compete the with fast-growing Chinese economy.
So, while it is hard to find strong cultural, economic, ethnic, religious or historical commonalities that make sense of Southeast Asia as a region, fear of undue Chinese influence certainly appears to be a unifying and defining factor.
You speak about Buddhist dogmas; another Buddhist may say that dogmas are not a Buddhist thing, as you must ‘kill the Buddha’
It’s quite ironic that you employ that example for several reasons. As you might know, the origin of the phrase, щАвф╜Ыцо║ф╜Ы, can be found in the writings of Linji Yixuan, the founder of the sect of Buddhism of which I belong. It is very powerful statement of doctrinal iconoclasm; indeed, its power is drawn from the fact that it recognizes the existence of orthodoxy to rebel against.
It cannot be denied that the earliest Buddhist authors took a strong stance against the use of amulets. As Buddhism spread, it was adopted by various cultures which syncretized it with preexisting local belief systems. I don’t see what you have against acknowledging the chronology of this process. As a linguist, allow me to give you an example: a creole language is a stable, living language that was the result of two other languages making contact and then developing into a pidgin. The fact that a creole developed from two (or more) other languages does not in any way delegitimize it, from the standpoint of descriptive linguistics; however, when discussing Haitian Creole, it would be absurd to put the word French in scare quotes, as if to imply that there is no such thing.
While I think it’s great that you have chosen to investigate the phenomenology of Buddhist practice, if everything is Buddhism then nothing is Buddhism. In order to have a meaningful conversation, scholars must arrive at some sort of agreement as to the conceptual boundaries of the topic of inquiry. I see no reason to not take the foundational doctrines of Buddhism at their word and not acknowledge the strongly stated position entailed within the metaphor of the Triple Gem. Or are we going to jump so deep into the Constructivist pool that such a conversation will eventually acknowledge Five Noble Truths of “Buddhism” (i.e., Shahada, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, and Hajj)?
See papers by Russell Fifield entitled “Southeast Asian Studies: Origins, Development, Future” in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (1976, vol 7 no.2), and “Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept” in Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science (1983, vol. 11 no. 2).
Lots of references in there to follow up on. Howard Malcolm’s “Travels in South-Eastern Asia” (1839) – which only included what is now mainland Southeast Asia, Asam and Manipur for example.
Might be worth consideration that it was not only Europeans and Americans referring to it as a region, too.
One avenue for furthering protection is monitoring of the implementation of accepted recommendations and tracking developments around those rejected recommendations arising from the UPR process
It is hard to understand why, this is already not part of the process?
The concept has a certain practical value, a pragmatic usefulness, for us here in Australia. But we here had no significant part really in originating and establishing the concept, the idea — though we took it up enthusiastically in the period after World War 2.
It was at that time, when (more than many once-imperial Europeans, and as much as western-looking, Pacific-focused people in the United States) we here had to start taking those countries of our “near” and “not so near north and northwest” seriously — and we had to try to see them if not “as a coherent whole” then as a loose congeries, and no longer as appendages of separate European-oriented empires — that the term took root here.
Those who gave currency and credibility to the term were part of an academic, political and policy-focused vanguard who looked not only to the near northwest (to Indonesia and beyond) but also to the faraway northeast: to the USA, to places like Cornell University, where the idea was gathering scholarly ballast and so established some grip with people in and around Washington DC.
But the idea, and the inclination to see the area as some sort of a “loose cultural assemblage” or “congeries”, goes back much earlier.
Not only the British (such as Hugh Clifford) but also the German geographers and culture-historians of the late nineteenth century came to an awareness of, and struggled to find or design a term for, “those countries further out there in Asia, beyond India that were not yet China” (but of which many had historical and cultural connections with both those great Asian civilizations).
People at that time seized upon the idea of “Further India” or “India-China”. “Indo-China” as a term soon became something else, under French proprietory “branding”. An idea of what we now call “mainland Southeast Asia” was grounded in and emerged from what Coedes termed “Les Etats Hindouises” etc. etc.
When geostrategic and political developments compelled outside attention onto the “island world” beyond “Further Asia”, the idea of “island” or “insular” Southeast Asia was devised, and appended to the original core “mainland” notion.
We have lived with it ever since. We have been bequeathed by that historical process and those geostrategic concerns with the term for and also the idea of “Southeast Asia”, together with the notion that, since we lump it all together under that term, it must all somehow constitute “a region”. Once again, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”.
Whereas it is more residue, what you are left with when you take other, more identifiable, solid and “primary” things away. Hence the vagueness and also variability, or malleability, of the term and what it is employed to denote.
How to grasp, come to terms with, convey and project to students an understanding of what, if anything, it is that makes “mainland” and “insular” Southeast Asia two conjoined or complementary parts of the one same cultural or historical entity has long been a problem for people teaching “Southeast Asian regional ethnography”.
Not quite true that most of Indonesia was never part of the South East Asia Command. Immediately after Japan’s surrender, MacArthur’s South West Pacific Area was dissolved and its Indonesian portions were transferred to SEAC. At the same time, most of mainland Southeast Asia was removed from the China Theatre and also given to SEAC. Only the northern part of Indochina remained in the China Theatre. SEAC in September 1945 was not a perfect approximation of today’s Southeast Asia, but it was pretty close. Only the Philippines and northern Indochina were not included.
I think that we must recognize that there are different Buddhisms in the world, as many scholars have pointed out way before me. You speak about Buddhist dogmas; another Buddhist may say that dogmas are not a Buddhist thing, as you must ‘kill the Buddha’; a third Buddhist may not even know what on earth a dogma is and may not have ever heard of the Triple Gem!
Quite frankly, I would not feel like deciding who among these is a Buddhist and who is not. I have no idea what the Buddha really said, and I am interested in studying Buddhism as a religion/philosophy that is lived, and that is therefore dynamic and subject to change. A Buddhist to me is whoever claims to be a Buddhist.
I do not deny that the practice is not egalitarian. Indeed, I state it explicitly in the article. But I am not aware of any social practice or society – secular as much as religious – that is not hierarchical at all.
To me, then, he point is about degrees of hierarchy and degrees of mobility within these hierarchies. Practices ‘from below’ obviously allow for social mobility (at least in terms of social capital), and open the possibility for more egalitarian cosmologies to be built.
The use of scare quotes around the phrases “true Buddhism” and “pure Buddhism” was unnecessary, and quite frankly, obnoxious. Even though it might not appeal to Siani’s populist sensibilities, the fact remains that from its founding, Buddhist dogma has explicitly stood against the belief in and use of mystic amulets, as evidenced by the metaphor of the Triple Gem.
Speaking as someone who practices a heterodox and syncretic form of Buddhism himself (Ch’an), one can have the conversation about “who owns Buddhism” without having to ignore the fact that a central set of founding precepts exist and that various folk beliefs are an adulteration of those core principles.
A touch too late. That ill-conceived “punishing” of Russia has already united Putin, most liked perhaps after Stalin- who is on the rise incidentally, and Xi with most concentrated power and wealth with global reach. Unlike shorty Nikita and surly Mao these twos are more street smart than average spin doctor and are comfortable in their own skin.
The guys/ guyzettes who usually “benefit” are not the usual cronies. But the scholars and NGO partners in civil society and visitors to this and that “Institute” (usually in Europe, Australia or the States).
They invariably turn themselves into “Maung Thaung Be’s”. Remember two years following “Higher Education”, he asked his father “Lu-ga-lay, kyun-note-ko ye-chan-chan ta kwaut pae bar”. Until the Burmese have that foolishness of looking down onto the Kalars and anything the Whites anywhere do is good and admirable (just like the Singaporean really!) they will sink like lead.”
It is truly hilarious that those can’t even keep own name white women “teaching” the Burmese about women liberation!!!!! Remember the women in hi-jab with a sign “I do not need to be liberated”. It is appealing to human nature to pit one against the other in hitherto happy harmonious society.
Ever a gentleman interpreting the words for some. Thanks.
These NGO’s and Foreign aids does two definite things for sure. One is they- the NGO’s call the tune and is part of their own agenda always and always Remember the UN building in New York sits on Rockefeller’s land. And of course National Endowment for Democracy- such weird and sickening epitaph but effective name- is officially part of CIA snipped off by law and run by one guy Gershman.
And of course Reuters snooping the aftermath of the one of so many “color” revolutions- more like civil incitements- around the world is no wonder as the plan was done by Gene Sharp and ex-attache Robert Helvey anyway paid by NED and Soros’s many outfits.http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Myanmar/myanmar.html
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How did Southeast Asia become a social fact?
As a brown-skinned layman inhabitant, could I posit that we’re all those people squeezed between the slant-eyed yellows to the north and the Aryan-Dravidian lot to the west, and not of the blacks and whites of the south?
On the other hand there are also long cultural and historical links from pre-western days, when the old native empires criss-crossed most of insular and mainland SE Asia.
How did Southeast Asia become a social fact?
For pre-modern history even the concept of mainland Southeast Asia is too broad & cutting mainland Southeast Asia into three parallel West, Central & East areas as Lieberman does in Strange Parallels I doesn’t really work either.
One coherent pre-modern geographical unit of study would run from Sri Lanka (source point for Theravadin lineages) through the Bay of Bengal (Portuguese zone of influence for a time), Burma, the Shan states & into Yunnan with its Tai states.
The real problem is the insularity of thinking caused by the Southeast Asia idea, scholars use the limited pool of concepts originated in so-called “Southeast Asian Studies” such as the so-called “Mandala (Southeast Asian political model)” instead of using concepts of broader applicability such as the notion of “chieftainship” in political anthropology or anthropology, thus linking into a rich comparative literature stretching around the world (see review of the literature by R. Brian Ferguson “A Paradigm for the Study of War and Society (1999)” available for download at his Rutger’s webpage. 🙂
Review of Burma’s Spring
Again unflappably generous, “Good Intention”. As the best lies are effective buried in 95% truth, a lot of these “Foreign Aid” wannabe goodytwoshoes may very well be deluding themselves. But the spirit of AID isn’t anygoody about it.
There are as usual everywhere, main strategies.
First of all is to make sure the “natives” always feel “Inferior”. For a country like Burma it is so easy to do as there has been precious little opportunity to know the other lands and people. Indeed even for people living outside of the country still accept their own “inferior” status and are embarrassed as they are not “White enough”.
And then there is this universal trick of pitting against each others. Male versus female seems to be the easiest and most “profitable” way to screw a cohesive society to unravel. Gender equality, human rights.etc. all these shamelessly coming out the mouths of people living in 80,000 dollar a month Mi Casa penthouse.
And that ever helpful “education”. Mind you one cannot blame the “education” crowd. Like child abuse, they commit the same crime when they grow up. After all the “Education” was specifically “invented” the Rockefeller’s and Carnegie’s with Guggenheim’s as helpers. Medical education more so. Anyhow education is the nest way for this “Epistemic community” which is easily translated to recruit Maung Thaung Be’s (a lot of them are in Canberra since 2011) to work together to pickle the joint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySnk-f2ThpE
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2967338/pdf/JCE-24-2-145.pdf
It is remarkable that after disastrous devastation of lands and societies in Latin America, Africa and some parts of Asia, the very same method can still be used to screw the precious little land left unspoiled. And the comprador bourgeoisie and “Epistemic community” alike welcome and usher it in.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
[…] the ranks of the NLD. In testament to such appeasement, Suu Kyi decided prior to November to omit several prominent party members from the general election ballot papers, the common denominator being their active role in the 1988 Revolution, the […]
Review of Burma’s Spring
Did you see this little gem about there’s no word for vagina in the Burmese language?! You could equally say that there’s no ‘polite word’ for penis either in the Burmese language. But that was not convenient.
When we never even had different gender forms for the third person pronoun, only thu for both genders… not until some bright spark started, before independence probably, a direct translation from the English and coined the word thu-ma in written Burmese! Still it never caught on in speech to this day.
The Burmese are too damned friendly, deferential and susceptible to the imposition of ‘enlightenment’, meekly, gratefully and unquestioningly accepting Western perceptions and interpretations of their own society. They’d better wise up about this little gem of an expression: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
I notice that you didn’t construct your “linguistic” comparison by suggesting that putting “pure French” or “true French” into scare quotes would be ridiculous.
That, of course, would be because, like the ridiculous notion of there being some “true Buddhism” or “pure Buddhism” that can be used as a cudgel with which to beat the superstitious and the constructivists simultaneously, there is no such qualified version of French that a linguist worth her salt would not find equally ridiculous.
Maybe you would do better to unearth a statement of the anti-amulet dogma from a “pure practitioner” or at least a “true” unpacking of the “metaphor of the Triple Gem”?
Good luck!
Silencing by means of “superstition”
I appreciate the interesting pedigree Siani gives here for the Angel Dolls, and I agree that the pantheon of deities drawn from Indic, SEAsian and Chinese cosmologies is ever-growing. The dolls belong to a class of objects, of which there are many subsets, imbued with special powers, the Jatukham amulet being a particularly interesting example as it has morphed wildly through its history. BTW, there was much scoffing about the Jatukham because it was said to be not Buddhist even as its avid purchasers were Buddhists, and it is still being used to raise funds for monastery construction. It was not an image of the Buddha, but a deity conjured up in the late 1980s and marketed to fund the renovation of a provincial city pillar.
As Justin McDaniel and others have shown, people are indeed creating and improvising their own religious practices (demand), and someone is always nearby ready to craft attractive products and profit from them (supply). Or is it the other way around? But I don’t see how the practices outlined here can be described as the construction of “a cosmology from below, a powerful inversion of the traditional world order.” What does “below” mean even if there are dolls that fit many budgets?
How did Southeast Asia become a social fact?
The elephant in the room is race. Eyes similar to Chinese and Japanese, but skin distinctly browner. The paler-skinned people probably evolved from the browner, out of need for vitamin D as they moved north.
‘South East Asia’ is a good name because it contains no invitation to imperialists, unlike that disastrous descendant of 19th-century European ignorance ‘South China Sea’.
How did Southeast Asia become a social fact?
Prof. Pepinsky raises an interesting historical question that has some implications for the future.
While it seems likely that the area included in the SEAC in WWII provided a first approximation of the region, I suspect it was the Cold War fear of Communism after the war that more precisely defined it. The victory of Mao’s forces in China in 1949 certainly was a key factor.
In 1954 US President Eisenhower spoke of the “domino theory” that he felt put the countries of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines at risk. Each of these countries had either local Communist insurgencies or significant Communist political parties (Indonesia). That same year the term Southeast Asia was used for an anti-communist security pact — the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty. This treaty set up the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) based in Bangkok. It was, in some ways, intended to be similar to NATO, which was established in Europe due to fears of Soviet Communism. Although most of the SEATO members were not actually located in Southeast Asia (the USA, Pakistan, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia), their concerns focused on Eisenhower’s supposed “dominoes.”
In 1967 the Southeast Asia label was used for an organization of five of the non-Communist countries in the region — ASEAN. Again one motivation was fear of the extention of Chinese Communist influence and the need for regional cooperation to withstand it. As Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik put it, Southeast Asia needed to become “a region which can stand on its own feet, strong enough to defend itself against any negative influence from outside the region.” Although Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma were not initial members of ASEAN, the organization was partly focused on the struggles in those countries.
The region, long influenced by Chinese trade, culture and population movements, became defined, at least in part, by these efforts to limit the influence of what was seen as aggressive Chinese Communism. Although that fear was reduced by changes in China after Mao’s death, the need for regional cooperation against rising Chinese economic, as well as political influence, led to ASEAN’s expansion to include Burma and the Communist nations of Indo-China in the 1990s.
More recently, the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community was motivated, at least in part, by the perception that the countries of the region had to cooperate on trade and economics to compete the with fast-growing Chinese economy.
So, while it is hard to find strong cultural, economic, ethnic, religious or historical commonalities that make sense of Southeast Asia as a region, fear of undue Chinese influence certainly appears to be a unifying and defining factor.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
You speak about Buddhist dogmas; another Buddhist may say that dogmas are not a Buddhist thing, as you must ‘kill the Buddha’
It’s quite ironic that you employ that example for several reasons. As you might know, the origin of the phrase, щАвф╜Ыцо║ф╜Ы, can be found in the writings of Linji Yixuan, the founder of the sect of Buddhism of which I belong. It is very powerful statement of doctrinal iconoclasm; indeed, its power is drawn from the fact that it recognizes the existence of orthodoxy to rebel against.
It cannot be denied that the earliest Buddhist authors took a strong stance against the use of amulets. As Buddhism spread, it was adopted by various cultures which syncretized it with preexisting local belief systems. I don’t see what you have against acknowledging the chronology of this process. As a linguist, allow me to give you an example: a creole language is a stable, living language that was the result of two other languages making contact and then developing into a pidgin. The fact that a creole developed from two (or more) other languages does not in any way delegitimize it, from the standpoint of descriptive linguistics; however, when discussing Haitian Creole, it would be absurd to put the word French in scare quotes, as if to imply that there is no such thing.
While I think it’s great that you have chosen to investigate the phenomenology of Buddhist practice, if everything is Buddhism then nothing is Buddhism. In order to have a meaningful conversation, scholars must arrive at some sort of agreement as to the conceptual boundaries of the topic of inquiry. I see no reason to not take the foundational doctrines of Buddhism at their word and not acknowledge the strongly stated position entailed within the metaphor of the Triple Gem. Or are we going to jump so deep into the Constructivist pool that such a conversation will eventually acknowledge Five Noble Truths of “Buddhism” (i.e., Shahada, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, and Hajj)?
How did Southeast Asia become a social fact?
See papers by Russell Fifield entitled “Southeast Asian Studies: Origins, Development, Future” in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (1976, vol 7 no.2), and “Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept” in Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science (1983, vol. 11 no. 2).
Lots of references in there to follow up on. Howard Malcolm’s “Travels in South-Eastern Asia” (1839) – which only included what is now mainland Southeast Asia, Asam and Manipur for example.
Might be worth consideration that it was not only Europeans and Americans referring to it as a region, too.
Region’s human rights watchdogs lack bite
One avenue for furthering protection is monitoring of the implementation of accepted recommendations and tracking developments around those rejected recommendations arising from the UPR process
It is hard to understand why, this is already not part of the process?
How did Southeast Asia become a social fact?
The concept has a certain practical value, a pragmatic usefulness, for us here in Australia. But we here had no significant part really in originating and establishing the concept, the idea — though we took it up enthusiastically in the period after World War 2.
It was at that time, when (more than many once-imperial Europeans, and as much as western-looking, Pacific-focused people in the United States) we here had to start taking those countries of our “near” and “not so near north and northwest” seriously — and we had to try to see them if not “as a coherent whole” then as a loose congeries, and no longer as appendages of separate European-oriented empires — that the term took root here.
Those who gave currency and credibility to the term were part of an academic, political and policy-focused vanguard who looked not only to the near northwest (to Indonesia and beyond) but also to the faraway northeast: to the USA, to places like Cornell University, where the idea was gathering scholarly ballast and so established some grip with people in and around Washington DC.
But the idea, and the inclination to see the area as some sort of a “loose cultural assemblage” or “congeries”, goes back much earlier.
Not only the British (such as Hugh Clifford) but also the German geographers and culture-historians of the late nineteenth century came to an awareness of, and struggled to find or design a term for, “those countries further out there in Asia, beyond India that were not yet China” (but of which many had historical and cultural connections with both those great Asian civilizations).
People at that time seized upon the idea of “Further India” or “India-China”. “Indo-China” as a term soon became something else, under French proprietory “branding”. An idea of what we now call “mainland Southeast Asia” was grounded in and emerged from what Coedes termed “Les Etats Hindouises” etc. etc.
When geostrategic and political developments compelled outside attention onto the “island world” beyond “Further Asia”, the idea of “island” or “insular” Southeast Asia was devised, and appended to the original core “mainland” notion.
We have lived with it ever since. We have been bequeathed by that historical process and those geostrategic concerns with the term for and also the idea of “Southeast Asia”, together with the notion that, since we lump it all together under that term, it must all somehow constitute “a region”. Once again, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”.
Whereas it is more residue, what you are left with when you take other, more identifiable, solid and “primary” things away. Hence the vagueness and also variability, or malleability, of the term and what it is employed to denote.
How to grasp, come to terms with, convey and project to students an understanding of what, if anything, it is that makes “mainland” and “insular” Southeast Asia two conjoined or complementary parts of the one same cultural or historical entity has long been a problem for people teaching “Southeast Asian regional ethnography”.
How did Southeast Asia become a social fact?
Not quite true that most of Indonesia was never part of the South East Asia Command. Immediately after Japan’s surrender, MacArthur’s South West Pacific Area was dissolved and its Indonesian portions were transferred to SEAC. At the same time, most of mainland Southeast Asia was removed from the China Theatre and also given to SEAC. Only the northern part of Indochina remained in the China Theatre. SEAC in September 1945 was not a perfect approximation of today’s Southeast Asia, but it was pretty close. Only the Philippines and northern Indochina were not included.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
I think that we must recognize that there are different Buddhisms in the world, as many scholars have pointed out way before me. You speak about Buddhist dogmas; another Buddhist may say that dogmas are not a Buddhist thing, as you must ‘kill the Buddha’; a third Buddhist may not even know what on earth a dogma is and may not have ever heard of the Triple Gem!
Quite frankly, I would not feel like deciding who among these is a Buddhist and who is not. I have no idea what the Buddha really said, and I am interested in studying Buddhism as a religion/philosophy that is lived, and that is therefore dynamic and subject to change. A Buddhist to me is whoever claims to be a Buddhist.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
I do not deny that the practice is not egalitarian. Indeed, I state it explicitly in the article. But I am not aware of any social practice or society – secular as much as religious – that is not hierarchical at all.
To me, then, he point is about degrees of hierarchy and degrees of mobility within these hierarchies. Practices ‘from below’ obviously allow for social mobility (at least in terms of social capital), and open the possibility for more egalitarian cosmologies to be built.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
The use of scare quotes around the phrases “true Buddhism” and “pure Buddhism” was unnecessary, and quite frankly, obnoxious. Even though it might not appeal to Siani’s populist sensibilities, the fact remains that from its founding, Buddhist dogma has explicitly stood against the belief in and use of mystic amulets, as evidenced by the metaphor of the Triple Gem.
Speaking as someone who practices a heterodox and syncretic form of Buddhism himself (Ch’an), one can have the conversation about “who owns Buddhism” without having to ignore the fact that a central set of founding precepts exist and that various folk beliefs are an adulteration of those core principles.
Recognising restrictive regimes
A touch too late. That ill-conceived “punishing” of Russia has already united Putin, most liked perhaps after Stalin- who is on the rise incidentally, and Xi with most concentrated power and wealth with global reach. Unlike shorty Nikita and surly Mao these twos are more street smart than average spin doctor and are comfortable in their own skin.
Review of Burma’s Spring
The guys/ guyzettes who usually “benefit” are not the usual cronies. But the scholars and NGO partners in civil society and visitors to this and that “Institute” (usually in Europe, Australia or the States).
They invariably turn themselves into “Maung Thaung Be’s”. Remember two years following “Higher Education”, he asked his father “Lu-ga-lay, kyun-note-ko ye-chan-chan ta kwaut pae bar”. Until the Burmese have that foolishness of looking down onto the Kalars and anything the Whites anywhere do is good and admirable (just like the Singaporean really!) they will sink like lead.”
It is truly hilarious that those can’t even keep own name white women “teaching” the Burmese about women liberation!!!!! Remember the women in hi-jab with a sign “I do not need to be liberated”. It is appealing to human nature to pit one against the other in hitherto happy harmonious society.
Review of Burma’s Spring
Ever a gentleman interpreting the words for some. Thanks.
These NGO’s and Foreign aids does two definite things for sure. One is they- the NGO’s call the tune and is part of their own agenda always and always Remember the UN building in New York sits on Rockefeller’s land. And of course National Endowment for Democracy- such weird and sickening epitaph but effective name- is officially part of CIA snipped off by law and run by one guy Gershman.
And of course Reuters snooping the aftermath of the one of so many “color” revolutions- more like civil incitements- around the world is no wonder as the plan was done by Gene Sharp and ex-attache Robert Helvey anyway paid by NED and Soros’s many outfits.http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Myanmar/myanmar.html