~~ ••• r •• ~""~A.. , .

( SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL)

Volume 48/ Number 4 / December 1994

Delusion and Necessity Elections and politics in Southeast Asia

by R.B. Taylor*

Because of the apparent absence of any direct link between electoral outcomes and the detennination of who governs in Southeast Asia. as assumed in democ­ratic theory, phenomena other than elections have been assumed to explain politics in the region. Though elec­tions have been a regular feature of politics in most of the countries in the region for decades, their signifi­cance has rarely been considered. Southeast Asian pol­itics, like politics in most countries in Asia and Mrica. was thought to be different, and therefore analytically distinct, from the politics of the states of North America and Western Europe. This belief, however,

• R.H. Taylor is pro-director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and professor of politics, University of London. The author wishes to thank Sudipta Kaviraj and Jolin Sidel for their very help­ful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The view expressed in it are the sole respon ibility of the author.

• CONTENTS OF TIDS ISSUE • David L Featherman to Human Welfare, Paul

LeaveSSRC 81 GrutlOugh and Anna Tlmg 95 Delu ion and Necessity: CWTCnt Activities at the Council

EJections and Politics, New Sta\J Appointment 100 R.H. Taylor 81 African Archives and

Marlcet Cultures, Museums Project: HIU-Tam Ho Tai 86 1994 Awards 100

Outsiders and Insiders: Culture, Health, and Entrepreneurial Minorities, Human Development 102 Daniel ChiI'D' 90 Recent Council Publications 103

Elbridge Sibley 94 A Selection of Council Environmental Discourses and Publications, 1993-1994 104

• 605 Third Avenue. New York, NY 10158

David L. Feathennan to LeaveSSRC

Council President David L. Featllerman, who ha served ince ince 1989, has announced hi resignation in order to assume

the po t of director of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. He will ucceed Robert B. Zajonc. a for­mer member of the SSRC board of directors. who retired as head of the institute in Augu t 1994. Mr. Featherman will as ume hi new po ition as soon a a successor is appointed at the SSRC. but not later than June 12. 1995.

During his tenure at the Council, Mr. Featherman enlarged its international networks and established new interdiscipli­nary avenues for research. His Mdual mandate~ encouraged the development of greater collaborative links between the joint committees and other research communities, including schol­ars who study other geocultural area • discipline-focused the­orists. and policy analysts and practitioners. He also reinvigo­rated the concept of mis ion-oriented basic research by foster­ing a number of projects related to pressing social i sues.

A Presidential Search Committee has been formed. headed by Albert Fishlow. University of California, Berkeley. chair of the Executive Committee of the SSRC's board of directors. Other members include Burton H. Singer. Princeton University, chair of the SSRC board; Barbara Heyn ,New York University. vice-chair of the board; Paul B. Baltes. Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education; and Lawrence D. Bobo. University of California, Los Angeles; both members of the SSRC board. Also Craufurd Goodwin. Duke University; Alejandro Portes. The Johns Hopkins University; and another individual. to be announced. M. PrisciUa Stone. program director for the Joint Committee on Africa. will serve as staff representative to the committee.

Nominations for the president's position are welcomed and should be addressed to: Chair, Presidential Search Committee. Social Science Research Council. 605 Third Avenue. New York. NY 10158.

81

ignored both the prevalence of elections in the region and their utility for explaining the locus of power in any society. Studied as a phenomenon which provides a guide to the nature of power and interests in a soci­ety, rather than as the arbiter of who governs, elections provide valuable insights into the dynamics of politi­cal change. To explore the role of elections in Southeast Asian politics, a conference on the topic was organized in Washington in September 1993.**

The study of elections is of interest not only for theoretical reasons, but also because currently many policy makers in "Western" governments hold that multi-party elections are the sine qua non of good government. This position is frequently based on con­tradictory assumptions and rarely on empirical ob er­vation. Current debates in Southeast Asian studies, similar to arguments advanced in relation to Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union as to whether economic development and changing class structures, centering on the rise of both independent capital and a business- and consumer-ori­ented middle class, inevitably lead to the development of less authoritarian polities, rarely consider the means by which elections structure power. Conversely, the thesis of most critiques of the programs for economic reform in states such as Vietnam and BurmalMyanmar, ignoring the contrary evidence of countries such as South Korea and Taiwan, links the holding of "free and fair elections" and the creation of a pluralist sys­tem of government as a necessary, if not a prerequi-

•• 1lle conference was sponsored by the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia, with the UPPOI1 of the Henry Luce Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Toby Volkman of the SSRC and Mary Brown Bullock of the Wilson Center, together with their re pective taff, provided invalu­able help in organizing the event.

The following papers were presented: Benedict Anderson, Cornell University, "Election and Participation in Three Southeast Asian Countries"; Suchit Bunbongkam, Chulalongkom University, "Elections and Democratization in Thailand"; Harold Crouch, Australian National University, "Malaysia: Do Election Make a Difference?"; John Dunn, University of Cambridge, "Studying Election "; Kate G. Frieson, inde­pendent cholar,"1lle Cambodian Election of 1993: A Case of Power to the People?"; JOIOO K. S., University of Malaya, "Elections' Janus Face: Limitations and Potential in Malay ia"; Sudipta Kaviraj, SOAS, University of London, "Election and Democracy in India"; Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, Australian National University, "Contested Meanings of Election in the Philippines"; Anek Laothamatas, Thammasat University, "A Tale of Two Democracies: Conflicting Perceptions of Elections in Thai Politics"; William Liddle, Ohio State University, "A Useful Fiction: Democratic Legitimation in New Order Indonesia"; Alexander R. Magno, University of the Philippine, "Elections as Political Fulcrum: Electoral Struggles in Filipino Politics"; Garry Rodan, Murdoch University, "Elections without Representation: 1lle Singapore Experience under the PAP"; and R.H. Taylor, SOAS, University of London, "Election in BurmalMyanmar: For Whom and Why?" A volume of the papers, with an epilogue by Dan Lev, is in preparation.

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site, condition for lasting economic growth. What comes first--economic development or competitive elections?

These contradictory analyses of the importance of elections in relation to the formation of liberal polities and economic development fail to acknowledge how, in practice, elections have been a regular feature of Southeast Asian politics since the 1940s, and in some cases, earlier. But here another paradox arises. With the exception of the Philippines prior to Marcos' dec­laration of martial law in 1972, and an isolated vote in Thailand in 1975, elections for presidents or legisla­tures have never directly caused a change of govem­ment in Southeast Asia. Nor has any incumbent party ever lost a referendum or plebiscite. So why do Southeast Asian governments bother to hold elections? What functions and whose interests do they serve?

Unexamined assumptions about the role of elections

The conventional answers usually take one of the following forms: (I) Elections are legitimizing acts in the eyes of the capitalist democracies with aid to dis­pense, and which, for reasons of their own domestic politics and personal ideals, want to be seen assisting democracies or, at least, struggling democracies. (2) Elections were accepted by the Westernized leaders of post-independence states as modem and often required by the withdrawing colonial power. (3) Popular doc­trine and elite opinion in nationalist movements articu­lated a view that independence meant government by the people. (4) Elections were seen as ways of allow­ing for the expression of diverse, but not ultimately destructive or confrontational, interests and cultures in plural societies, preserving the rights of minorities while championing the power of the majority. The e arguments, in one form or another all derived from formal theories of democracy, often seem irrelevant to the actual practice of politics in most of Southeast Asia.

But despite the ineluctably authoritarian cast of Indonesian, Thai, Burmese, Cambodian, Vietname e, Malaysian, Singaporean, and Filipino politics, no gov­erning elite has ever abandoned for long the idea of elections. Elections have been held regularly and few leaders have attempted to adopt the fascist po e of the people's leader through undetermined will. Not only are elections held, but they are taken seriously. Mas­sive amounts of money are spent mobilizing voters

VOLUME 48. NUMBER 4

and organizing polls. The 10 of one or two seats to the oppo ition, where one exi t , re ults in pages of analysi and prediction of doom when it i obvious that the election has not shaken the formal position of the ruling authorities one iota.

If election in Southeast Asia have not fulfilled the functions required of them in democratic theory, why have electorates turned out in large numbers to cast their ballots after following the campaigns and their personalitie with apparent interest? Believing one to be involved in the process of governance, even if vic­ariou ly, might be one explanation. The pro pect of reward for backing the winner might be another. AI 0,

patron-client relationship , admini trative pre sure , corporatist-like desires for organizational olidarity and control, and similar inducement may be present in different degrees. Several of the papers presented at the conference pointed to these latter po sibilities.

Related to the question of elections are is ues aris­ing from other formal republican institutions uch as parliaments and con titutions. If constitutions are not documents adhered to, but rather formally or, more often, informally, altered to fit momentary require­ments, why do states have them? Similarly, the legis­lature is, from the point of view of the executive, largely an expensive nuisance to be controlled. Since few legislature in Southeast Asia, again with the par­tial exception of the Philippines, have actually ever proposed, let alone passed, policies or laws contrary to the wishes of the head of government, why bother with them at all?

Wbybotber?

Clearly, elections are important but for reasons dif­ferent from those asserted in formal theory. The legiti­macy that elections appear to provide ruling elites is obvious. But when electorates are aware of manipu­lated campaigns, when law and practice do not create equal contests for government and opposition, but dis­tort the process in favor of the incumbents, what kind of legitimacy is created? The electoral process carries within it the promise of popular control of the state. Will the generation of repeated popular expectations from the continued practice of elections in essentially authoritarian conditions eventually change their nature and create the genuinely open contests postulated by theory? Several papers suggested this may now be occurring among some social groups. But if this is too much to hope for everywhere, might elections not at

DEcEMBER 1994

least lead to the emergence of regime more re pectful of the rights and view of their citizens? Again, ev­eral authors argued for this position.

Other question about the role of elections are al 0

apparent. Central is the multiple u es of election by different types of authoritarian regimes, the nature of party systems, and the relation hip between economic development, social change, and the role of election in the region's polities. It is often postulated that a high level of economic development is a prerequisite for the holding of democratic elections. That propo i­tion need to be te ted by examining whether there i any correlation between economic tructure and wealth and electoral behavior in the region. But i such a simple correlation, if found, actually of explanatory value in terms of how people understand the meaning of elections? The papers on Thailand and the Philippines make clear that thi is not so. The reform-minded Thai urban middle class and village­based farmers perceive the purpo e of elections and the intended results quite differently. Similarly, in the Philippines, the promi e of elections for the e tab­Iished elites and the newer political and ocial group has resulted in new and old-style politics in competi­tion, creating again a politics of elections, not through elections.

The widely accepted arguments about the general­ized nature of patron-client relations throughout Southeast Asia poses an interesting comparative point of departure for electoral studies and democratic the­ory growing out of the experience of North American and European industrial democracies. Though elec­tions may be exercises in creating national solidarity and ocial inclusion, as well as opportunities for civic education, the liberal sociological as umptions of such contentions stand in contrast to the historically po tu­lated organic nature of patron-clientalist Southeast Asian societies. Though the electoral act holds up the principle of atomized free choice in politics, as the market does in economics, this might actually be per­ceived as destabilizing, rather than reinforcing, the existing social order, at least from the perspectives of dominant elites.

This and the other points noted above could proba­bly have been deduced through the existing studies and mature reflection. But the papers presented and the ensuing discussions led to the emergence of a number of points about the functions and nature of elections in contemporary politics, not only in

l-m.tsl83

Southeast A ia but in other societie , which require further tudy. A the peciali ts examined the hi tory of election in variou ocietie, the dynamics of polit­ical change became increasingly clear and a number of comparative point were developed.

In order to under tand the meaning and role of elec­tion in any ociety, one need to contextualize the election proces . Election only have meaning within a particular hi torical pace and time, and to ee them out ide of their context is to deny them any ignificant meaning. Understanding the meaning of election i a genuine comparative project.

The hi torieal specificity of a global act

It became apparent, for example, that the subject of election i now nearly univer al and the regional case are part of a global phenomenon, integral to the nature of the modem republic. Much of what we ay about elections in Southeast A ia mu t therefore apply to what we ay about election in Europe, America, and elsewhere. But at the arne time, election mu t be under tood within their own hi torical and ocial con­text. Unlike the as umptions of mo t casual journali -tic and governmental observers, election are not uni­ver ally under tood or practiced in the arne way. Nonethele s, they hould not be ignored as irrelevant authoritarian ru e ,a argued on different ground by orne Marxi t and liberal advocate of an elu ive

democratic ideal. It is apparent that the particular historical circum­

stance in which election are introduced or re-e tab­Ii hed a a central political in titution are crucial for how they then become routinized and normalized. The "first" election e tabli he the ground rule for the conduct of ub equent "national-level" politic . Tho e who are able to develop a succe ful role in the e ini­tial events are likely to remain player for many years to come, while tho e who are excluded, u ually on the political left, are ultimately denied a place in "legiti­mate" political life. Election are therefore as much about who cannot have power as who can.

Elections and democracy-are they related?

Election are double-edged weapon in the ri e of democracy and in the formation of dominant and "per­manent" political regime . On the one hand, they are pacifying in trument . They are often mean of both demotivating and demobilizing population , limiting

84\ITEMS

the politically po ible. This u ually follow the elimi­nation of the left or other group unwilling to accept a ecular, republican, bureaucratic definition of the

political world. On the other hand, in circum tance where narrow, aging, ineffectual regimes have 10 t touch with and have alienated the bulk of the popula­tion, election can provide a fulcrum for prying open and widening the phere of political activity by demon trating the illegitimacy of the old regime. It remain to be demon trated, however, whether thi provide an opportunity for genuinely new group to enter into politic , or i merely the mean by which a faction which previou Iy 10 t influence within the old regime can regain control. Generational changes need al 0 be reflected upon in lhi context.

Difference in per pective as to whether election are potentially liberating or actually entrapping mech­ani m are related in part to one' perception. A political phenomena and public arena ,election look different from the perspective of tho e in power at the top of the tate and tho e powerle at the bottom. Election hold out a threat and an opportunity to both the e group ; their effectivene in the eye of both i a function of whether they ucceed in pacifying or not. Thi rai e the intere ting que tion of how fraudulent an electoral proces has to be before it denie legitimacy.

Election in Southeast A ia, as in mo t of the A ian and African world, have arrived with, rather than a a con equence of, the ri e of the modem bureaucratic tate, the idea of the nation, capitali m, and indu trial­

ization. Therefore the "burden" that election are expected to "carry" in Southeast A ian hi tory i much greater than in European and American hi tory. The di affected and their upporters tend to expect dramatic change and elite exaggerate the likely con equence of election , as an idealized and reified in titution. Thi i an e sential point about the context of election in the region. Election in the region al 0 developed when several model of electoral life were available: American two-party pre idential, Soviet one-party communist, European multi-party parliamentary.

Though a collective expre ion of public preference in it ideal form, an election i al 0 an individualizing activity. The act of voting as ume , at least momentar­ily, that variou c1as , tatu and other ocial identitie and forms of action are Ie real and ignificant in political life than i generally accepted. Election require people to think of themselve as atomized, if only during the time they are in the voting booth.

VOLUME 48. NUMBER 4

There is what wa de cribed a a "teleological pull" to election and all that goe with them. It i difficult to imagine the present world without election for they combine 0 many aspect of modem notions of political life, not least bureaucratic organization and mas con umption. That aid, election in Southeast A ia and the re t of A ia and Africa are not indige­nou . The mean by which people have come to accept election as the appropriate mean to tructure their political live i little understood though the proce has rapidly become indigenized. A lively debate was generated at the conference over the question of whether the indigenization proces itself was not part of a proces of disabling the potential empowerment of people promised by electoral politic , when the act of voting i defined as the totality of democratic rights.

Elections and the study of Southeast Asia

Elections are pecific and mu t be understood con­textually. They have been grafted onto ocieties with deep political hi tories and pre-bureaucratic institu­tion . But they are al 0 a nearly univer al in titution, part of the logic of a larger political order of moder­nity. Their ubiquity has a powerful demon tration effect on their world audiences. The promi e of elec­tion is paraded daily in everyone's media. The e elec­tion often eem to have greater meaning in the ab tract than do the one personally experienced.

In their ideal form, election are means of resolv­ing political conflict without re orting to force. But they may merely be mask to coercion which exists or ha taken place in a different context or a different time. In societies with intense levels of conflict, elec­tions are probably meaningle ,because the funda­mental conflict will be over what the election i about or who it is for, not who will win a particular race. The current advocacy of elections as the sine qua non of democratic politics and good government needs to be examined in terms of who i expected to be the

DECEMBER 1994

victor of the e conte t and which conte t will be recognized a genuine.

Though election can be in titution which in the end thwart the de ire of many, they can al 0 encour­age change in ocial attitude by de troying pattern of deference and forcing elite to recognize the legiti­macy of a "loyal" oppo ition. Both of the e proce es individualize ociety while legitimizing political force a they are brought into the permitted ph ere of political action. In the arne way, election cau e an affirmation of an identity which people may not ini­tially feel. The conte t define the player and their relation hip with the other participant in the election.

Studied y temically in their pecific and their uni­versal circum tance ,election in Southeast A ia clar­ify important aspect of political, economic, and ocial change in the region. No longer able to legit­

imize them elve through cognatic descent and chari -matic claim or right through might, ruling elites have found they mu t concede the importance of election . New ocial group and clas e , new and old intere t , can then attempt to use the opportunities for organiza­tion and discu ion, even if greatly con trained by law and practice, to try to open further opportunitie and right for them elve . Succe ful elite have been able to manage this proce through incorporation as well as coercion. Election are indeed Janus-faced, grant­ing and con training liberty depending upon the circumstance .

The tudy of election hould no longer be ignored in Southeast Asian studies. They do provide a mean for understanding the rise of new social classe and the changing locu of power in any ociety. As was concluded at the conference, the alleged uniquene of various Southeast A ian cultures, however defined, can no longer be relied upon as explanation of the politics of the region. Student of Southeast A ia need to study the region's politic in its own terms, but without ignoring its universal features. •

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Market Cultures Entrepreneurial precedents and ethical dilemmas in East and Southeast Asia

by Hue-Tam Ho Tai*

The past two decades have witnes ed an extraordinary expansion in market activity in East and Southeast A ia. To the Four Dragon of East A ia (the PRC, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan) have been added the Little Tigers of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indone ia). Thi expan ion i not im­ply a mechanical reflection of new economic policie but a complex product of ocial and cultural influ­ences. Within and acro s national borders, ocial groupings have responded quite differently to new market opportunities. Differential participation of ocial grouping in markets has become a central i ue

in ocioeconomics and raise eriou que tions for policy and ocial ju tice.

The conference on market culture , which was held in Cambridge, Mas achu ett , on October 1-2, 1994, brought together cholar working on East and Southeast Asia to explore the factors influencing the participation in, and reaction to, market activity of dif­ferent actors or group of actors, in the countrie of the e regions .• It ought to build on the finding of previou SSRC- pon ored re earch, in particular ev­eral conference which culminated in three publi hed volume .2 The conference organizers called on partici­pants to move beyond the modernization debate of

• Huc-Tarn Ho Tai is Kenneth T. Young Professor of Sino-Vietnarne Hi tory, Harvard University.

I The conference w ponsored by the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia and was organized by Robert Hefner, B ton University, and Huc­Tarn Ho Tai . Participants included Jennifer Alexander, University of Sydney; Dru C. Gladney, University of Hawaii , Manoa; Gary G. Hamilton, University ofw' hington; Robert W Hefner; Tania Mumy Li, Dalhou ie University; Hy van Luong, University of Toronto; Jami Mackie, Australian National University; Shaun K. Malarney, Harvard University; Michael MonteS4llo, Cornell University; Michael Peletz, Colg e University; Shamsul A.B., Universiti Kebangsaan Malay ia; David Szanton, University of California, Berkeley; Hue-Tam Ho Tai; and Robert P. Weller, Boston University. The di USS4II were Ruth McVey and Anthony Reid, Au tralian N tional University.

2 Ruth McVey, ed., SoutMast ASian Capllalists (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast A ia Program, 1992); Gillian Hart, Andrew Turton, and Benjamin White, cd .• Agrarian Trans!omuJtions: Local Proasus and tM Stale in Southeast Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 19 9); OlarIes Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre, eds., Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of wt and SoutMast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).

86\1TEMS

the.1960s and more recently revived culturali t expla­nations of market succe s. While the fonner as umed that market proce se would re ult in cultural and ocio-political convergence acro vast region , the

latter have offered weeping generalizations about rei­fied and static cultures, often ignoring significant dif­ferences in pattern of participation in the market within culture and cultural variations within ocieties.

The trans-regional focu of the conference and the diverse disciplinary grounding of the participants helped bring to bear on the study of Southeast A ia the rich literature concerning the growth of the economies of the PRC and Taiwan, while seeking to avoid the pitfall of monocau al explanations of a highly complex phenomenon. The more advanced tate of economic development in everal countrie of

East A ia is reflected in the larger body of cholarship dealing with i ue as ociated with that development. Furthermore, exploring different approache to the tudy of market participation in the e countries al 0

helped prevent a tendency, which is sometime found in analyses of entrepreneurial ucce among oversea Chinese, to exaggerate the extent of Chine e entrepre­neurial activitie and to oversimplify Chine e culture. It also allowed everal participants to examine the value of the Marginal Trading Minority hypothe i which has ometime been advanced to explain thi apparent Chine e economic ucce tory.3 The con-ference wa timely as well in that it considered the role of I lam and Confuciani m in promoting or hin­dering market activity and in etting the term of the di cour e regarding the morality of the market. Several papers directly or indirectly challenged the notion that Islam and Confuciani m are diametrically oppo ed culture bloc that are bound on a colli ion cour e with each other and with the West.

The conference brought out the wide variety of understanding of the concept of market , trade, enter­pri e, and entrepreneur hip that exi ts among cholar of Southeast A ia and reflect the relatively recent economic expan ion of that region and the cholar hip as ociated with it. Several participants pointed out that many Southeast A ian ocietie have actively partici-

3 According to variants of thi hypoehe i ,certain minority groups tend t~ concentrate their energies in commercial and entrepreneurial activilie eIther as a result of their p ychologicaJ drive to succeed or because they are excluded from land ownership, government service, and the armed forces. Such minoritie are also referred to as "entrepreneurial minorities" "middlemen minorities," or "pariah capitali ," owing to their marginal:' and thu vulnerable-political and social talus.

VOLUME 48, NUMBER 4

pated in international market activities at least since the mid-19th century, and in some cases earlier. Nonetheless, it was agreed that the economic growth of the past two decades represents a significant accel­eration of market processes worthy of further study. These processes have been differentially affected by the national and subnational communities among which they have taken place and have been experi­enced in different ways by different actors. Although a single conference could not possibly exhaust the range of variations, several clusters of themes emerged among the papers pre ented.

One theme found in several papers was the role of the state in everal countries in constructing fairly rigid notions of ethnicity. Various ethnic groups have been presumed by both colonial and postcolonial authorities alike to possess specific cultural character­istics, among which is a predisposition (or lack thereot) toward entrepreneurial behavior. The cultural­ist gaze of the state obscures commonalities among the great majority of people of different ethnic back­grounds, and diverts attention away from other possi­ble explanations for the success or failure of various communities to prosper in market economies. Tania Li pointed out that, until two decades ago, the vast majority of Chinese in Singapore were wage-workers, as were the vast majority of Malays, and that they were not much better off than the latter. Yet, even then, the myth of Chinese economic success had become entrenched in Malaysia. While neglecting other factors which may significantly affect market behavior and success, Singapore's culturalist explana­tions have put the burden of improving the lot of poorer members of different ethnic communities on those very communities, fostering communalism along with cul­turalist approaches to the alleviation of poverty.

Robert Hefner's paper also pointed to culturalist policies, in this case of the Indonesian ruling elite, as having a profound impact on the Muslim majority population. Hefner traced the origins of this phenome­non to policies enacted in the aftermath of the 1965 coup. New Order politics fostered an alliance between military and bureaucratic elites on the one hand and the Chinese business community on the other. Simultaneously, while seeking to depoliticize the masses, the state allowed Muslim leaders to embark on an intense program of Islamic education which eventually led to an Islamic revival. This Islamic revival has caused the Indonesian state to seek to

DECEMBER 1994

accommodate Indonesian Muslims' demands for a larger share of political power and economic prosper­ity. Meanwhile, the country's recent economic growth has provoked a lively debate among Indonesian Muslims about the proper role of Islam in economic activity. Although the e debate arouse great passions, Hefner points out that they concern fairly minor issues in socioeconomics and are entirely amenable to re 0-

lution. Yet, culture is not the only factor shaping mar­ket behavior or economic uccess. Despite the enact­ment of policie discriminating against the Chinese minority, the rent-seeking behavior of the military and bureaucratic elites continues to benefit Chinese busi­nessmen disproportionately.

Culturalist constructions of ethnicity are not con­fined to Southeast Asia. In hi paper on two Hui com­munities in Ningxia in northwest China and Quanchou on the southeastern coast, Dru Gladney showed that the Chine e state's construction of Hui ethnicity as being culturally predisposed toward entrepreneurship has allowed the Hui to engage in entrepreneurial activ­ities with less ambivalence than Han Chinese who continue to be glo ed as predominantly agrarian. The Hui of Quanchou are significantly more prosperous than their Han neighbors. Yet, neither culturalist expla­nations nor the Marginal Trading Minority hypothesis can account for this uccess; the geographically iso­lated Hui community in Ningxia is still very poor, as are most of China's minority people.

Ambivalence toward the market was also the theme of Shaun Malamey's paper on Vietnam and of Robert Weller's on Taiwan. Malamey pointed out that Confucian and Marxist official ideology contain many elements which significantly restricted market activity in Vietnam. In imperial times, this included prohibitive taxes on trade, the empressment of artisans into com­pulsory and ill-paid labor, state interference in market­ing activities, and other forms of control (this point was also made by Hy van Luong). Yet, local customs and values were far more accommodating of profit­seeking behavior. Among these was intense competi­tion for prestige among members of the same village community. Robert Weller highlighted the deeply gen­dered nature of participation in, and reaction to, the market in Taiwan. Agreeing with Gary Hamilton's the­sis that Taiwan's spectacular economic growth is due in large part to the activities of small and medium­sized family fmns, he shows how women's position within the Chinese family, together with the dominant

ITEMSl87

gender ideology, have hindered women' participation in the networks of information and influence (guanxt) which have been crucial for the ucce of male-domi­nated firm . Thi in turn has led tho e women involved in entrepreneurial activitie to adopt what might be de cribed as more Weberian behavior than their male counterparts. Ambivalence toward the mar­ket on the part of both men and women in Taiwan is reflected in the revival of religio ity, who e growth can be charted along with the growth of the economy and in the more recent environmentali t phenomenon. Both the religious revival and the environmentali t movement are marked by highly gendered discourse on morality and the market. Thi can be een in the coexi tence of the male-dominated I Kuan Tao ect and the female-dominated Tzu Chi sect. Among men, concern for the environment are couched in term of leaving a legacy for on , while women peak of nur­turing the earth.

Gender ideology wa al 0 the theme of Hy van Luong' paper on the Bat Trang ceramic indu try in n rthern Vietnam. At the turn of the century, two­third of enterpri e owner in Bat Trang were women. During the colonial and communist period , the num­ber of female enterpri e owner declined teadily. Luong attribute the pre-colonial preponderance of women in entrepreneurial activitie to the official male-centered ideology which tigmatized trade and trader , a point which Malamey al 0 made. Confucian ideology and tate policie actively di couraged men from participating in market activitie while making it acceptable for women, with their ubordinate tatu , to engage in trading. However, de pite the colonial tate' eemingly gender-neutral economic policie ,

and the communi t tate' proactive policy of gender equality, other factor contributed to the decline of female entrepreneur hip. Among the e was the increased bureaucratization of entrepreneurial activi­tie . Thi included the growth of complex regulation which required a greater degree of education on the part of entrepreneurs and managers than in the past and the ri e of hierarchically tructured enterprise . Both factor made employment in enterpri e more palatable to hierarchy-con ciou male and al 0

required higher level of education than women typi­cally achieved. In the communi t era, membership in the military or the Communi t Party al 0 contributed to the formation of male-dominated network of infor­mation and connection which, as in Taiwan, were not

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acce ible to women who e mobility and range of experiences were more re tricted.

Local con truction of kin hip--a well as gen­der-formed the theme of everal other paper . Drawing from fieldwork data on the Filipino fi hing community of E tancia, David Szanton howed that while fi hing fleet captain and crew are overwhelm­ingly local Filipino , the firm engaged in proce ing and retailing the catch tend to be owned by Chine e. He traced the origin of thi duality of function to Filipino pattern of patron-client relation hip which in turn are haped by Filipino con truction of mas­culinity and communal obligation . Michael Peletz contrasted the Malay of Negeri Sembilan with the Minangkabau of Sumatra. While both communitie how very profound cultural imilaritie, the

Minangkabau participate in market activitie far more than do the Malay of Negeri Sembi Ian. Peletz note the role of matrifocal kin hip in di couraging in-mar­rying Malay men from engaging in profit- eeking behavior which would enrich their in-law ; yet the need to meet the demand for more pre tige good from in-law may pur orne to maximize wealth.

The drain on re ource po ed by the obligation of kin hip and community appeared in everal paper . Michael Peletz pointed out, for example, that Malay prefer not to employ members of their own kin group. Explanation of market behavior which center on thi factor may be een to reinforce the Marginal Trading Minority argument. But conference participant pointed out that out ider need not be con trued along ethnic line . Migrant from the dominant population may aloe cape the demands of kin and neighbor on their personal re ource . Similarly, the hiring of non-Chine e managers in Chine e-owned enterpri e in Southea t A ia may be related to the practice, com­mon among family-owned firm of Taiwan, of elect­ing manager from outside the kin group.

Matrifocal pattern of kin hip and the pursuit of intrafamilial autonomy in everal Southeast A ian ocietie contrast tarkly with the familial ethic

which has purred the growth of family firm in Taiwan. Hamilton' re earch point to the ability of male head of hou ehold to mobilize both financial re ource and labor from their children and channel the e into the family bu ine . In Southea t Asia, men and women tend to head their own mall- cale bu i­ne ; children' contributions to the household econ­omy are perceiVed as gift rather than as obligation

VOLUME 48, NUMBER 4

and therefore cannot be reliably counted as part of the family' re ource . Furthennore, while Chinese pattern of inheritance may explain the diversification of family enterprise in Taiwan, in much of Southeast A ia, the inability of parents to make use of their children's finan­cial and manpower resource work again t the urvival of family bu ine ses past the first generation.

Jennifer Alexander reported that while mall- cale traders are overwhelmingly women, large traders tend to be male, although a few women have al 0 become ucce ful as large- cale trader, involved in the global

economy. Their ucce i attributable to their finan­cial re ource and network of infonnation and up­ply. As Luong reported for Vietnam, the greater importance of education and of far-reaching network of connections tends to favor men over women.

Contrary to the myth of Chine e economic ucce , not all Chinese are involved in entrepreneurial activity, and not all Chine e entrepreneur in China or Southeast A ia are succe ful. This point was explored in Michael Montesano's tudy of two Sino-Thai trad­ing families, one located in Trang, the other in Singburi. The fonner has pro pered by becoming involved in the global and international market. In 0

doing, it has adopted some of the trategies employed by Taiwane e family fmn , which involve diversifica­tion and clear division of the different operations among family members. The latter, by contrast, has remained local both in tenns of upply and demand, and has not resorted to diversification.

The conference highlighted the wide range of mar­ket participation to be found in Southea t Asia, rang­ing from petty traders to heads of large international conglomerates, and the difficulty of eeking explana­tion that fit uch a diver e phenomenon. Naturally, the papers could not cover all po ible hypothe es. Several participants pointed to the importance of polit­ical connections in favoring pecific entrepreneur or entrepreneurial communities, and of "being at the right place at the right time." A number of highly uc­ce ful entrepreneur have benefited from hitching their political tar to a powerful patron. Others are able to further their economic interest through the use of force. Government policy, either through a cultural­i t orientation or rent-seeking behavior, may olidify previously fluid categorie and rigidify ethnic bound­arie . Belief in fortune and luck was also mentioned a a factor influencing entrepreneurial behavior that was worthy of further research. Although mo t papers concentrated on production as the dominant fonn of participation in the market, pattern of consumption are equally important, e pecially in this era of global­ized, internationalized economie . The availability of credit and the ability to travel long distances are aI 0

crucial factors in haping participation and succe in the market. These, as well as other issues which came up during discu sion, could be the focus of more re earch on an extremely important topic. The paper presented at the conference are currently being edited by its organizers. •

Census Bureau's 1995 Annual Research Conference

The Census Bureau' 1995 Annual Research Conference (ARC 1995) will be held March 19-23, 1995 at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, five miles from National Airport and two block from Metro. ARC 1995 will comprise a mix of topics, uch as addres regi ters, determining cen us content, cen u questionnaire response research, defining household • ethnicity, sampling in cen us talcing. mall area estimation, measuring international trade. data quality in longitudinal surveys, agriculture, and censu evalu­ation. For further information contact Maxine Anderson-Brown, ARC Conference Coordinator, Office of the Director. Bureau of the Cen u • Wa hington, D.C. 20233; (301) 763-1150.

DECEMBER 1994 ITEMSl89

Outsiders and Insiders Entrepreneurial minorities and conflicting ethnic identities in the modem transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe

by Daniel Chirot*

Comparing Chinese entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia to Jewish ones in Europe is an old and often disreputable game. In an introductory paper at the January 1994 SSRC conference that he and I organized, I Anthony Reid of the Australian National University noted that on their first expedition to the East Indies in 1596 the Dutch began to compare the Chinese there to Europe's Jews.2 Ten years later an English de cription of Java said, "[T]he Chyne e ... like Jewes, live crooching under them [the Javanese], but robb them of their wealth and send it for Chyna. The Chynese are very craftie people in trading, using all kinds of co oning and deceipt which may po ible be devised."3

The image of the devious, alien merchant is almo t universal in agrarian societies and has survived into the modem era, along with the accompanying ethnic stereotyping that occur if any identifiable linguistic or religious group is disproportionately succe sful in trade. A 17th-century Chine e chronicle describing Europeans said, "Red-hairs or Red Barbarians ... are identical with the Hollander .... They are covetou and cunning, are very knowledgeable concerning valu­able merchandise, and are very clever in pursuit of gain. They will risk their lives in earch of profit. ... If one falls in with them at sea, one is certain to be robbed by them."4 Similar sentiments exi t today in Mo cow about people from the Caucasus or in Lo Angeles about Koreans.

But when Professor Reid, then on the Joint Committee for Southeast Asia, contacted me to pro-

• Daniel Chirol i profi or of international tudies and sociology at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington.

1111e conference was held in La Jolla. California. under the auspices of the Joint Comminee on Southeast A ia. 111e project was originally funded by an SSRC seed &rant under the comparatiVe/transnational competition.

2 G.P. Rouffaer and J.W. Ijzerrnan, eels., De Ursie Schipvaorl der Nederlanders Mer Oost· lndil onder COrMiis de Houtman 1595-1597 (The Hague: Nijhoff for Linschoten· Vereniging, 1915), Volume II, p. 26.

3 Edmond Scon, "An Exact Discourse," (1606), in The Vo}oge oj Henry Middleton to the Moluccas. ed. Sir William F ter (London: Halduyt Society, 1943), p. 174.

• C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empirt 1~/8()() (New York: Knopf, 1965), p. 236.

9O\ITEMS

pose this project, it was not our intention to rehash old tereotype . Our goal was to as emble a group of cholars who might sy tematically compare two of the

mo t important entrepreneurial minorities in the mod­em world, Jews in Central Europe and Chinese in Southeast Asia, in order to find out whether or not their recent historical experiences had enough in com­mon to justify ome conclusion about how such minorities are affected by the ri e of nationalism.

Yet, at our conference, despite our as urances that we hoped to go beyond traditional invidious, superfi­cial comparisons, we found out that the Southeast Asian scholar were not certain that the enterprise was valid. The analogy between Southeast A ian Chine e and Jew ,e pecially in Islamic societie , is inflamma­tory, and con idering the vast historical and contextual difference between the two groups, what is the point of uch a tired comparison, other than to provide fuel for tho e who might use it for their own political end ?

This was not our only problem. Central European Jew and Southeast Asian Chinese have never been the homogeneous communities their detractors imag­ined. They were diver e groups who e economic and political role hifted over time and were omewhat different from country to country. Generalizations about each group alone, much less the two of them together, are suspect. Furthermore, neither anti­Semiti m nor anti-Sinici m have been permanent fix­tures. For generations at a time, they seemed to be marginal forms of prejudice, while at others they have urfaced virulently.

Finally, there is a trong temptation to tum the hi -tory of Central European Jews into a teleological morality play with the Holocau t, or Shoah (catastro­phe) as the inevitable outcome of centuries of preju­dice. But no matter how tragic the events of the 19305 and early 1940 , it is simply untrue that all previou Jewish-gentile relations in Central Europe led inevitably to this outcome. As for the Southeast Asian Chine e, they neither view them elves as inevitable victims nor expect any remotely comparable fate. A Linda Lim, a conference participant from the Univer ity of Michigan put it, the recent past in Southeast Asia has been one of unprecedented pros­perity and the easing of ethnic tensions, 0 why even raise the is ue? Indeed, a Southeast Asian conferee decided that the comparison was mi placed, and declined to contribute a paper to the volume we are preparing.

VOLUME 48. NUMBER 4

Identity and choice: assimilation to what?

Nevertheless, the rest of us felt that the enterpri e in which we were engaged could be useful, though not to compare Jews and Chinese as uch. Rather, the papers presented were important accounts of how the pres-ure to build unitary modem states in the late 19th and

early 20th centuries had brought into being new cul­tural identities, and how these, in tum, redefined older inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations. In many cases in both Central Europe and Southeast Asia, this set the stage for new forms of inter-communal compe­tition which only superficially re embled old one . Formerly successful entrepreneurial minoritie who had been well adapted to either colonial or tradition­ally patrimonial arrangements now had to find new ways of surviving, while tho e who took control of the emerging modem state bureaucracies tended to be nei­ther as lenient of old cultural difference nor as will­ing to countenance economic competition from tho e they saw as "outsiders" as the previous elites had been. Thus, everyone involved was faced with the need to develop new identities that had to be recon­ciled with the needs of modem markets and bureau­cratic state structures. This had paradoxical conse­quences. It set the tage for the elimination of stereo­types based on fading quasi-feudal occupational cate­gories; but it also intensified rivalry over who would control the powerful new institutions created by mod­em states. Thus, it simultaneously decreased the basis for old forms of ethnic occupational pecialization and increased the potential for fierce ethnic conflict.

In the end we did not address the question of why certain groups emerged as successful minority entre­preneurs, though that might have been an intere ting exercise. Nor did we make any claims to have found the centrally defining traits of all Southeast Asian Chinese communities or of Central European Jewish ones. But we did come to some conclusions about how the situation of these two important groups of people changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, what this had to do with modernization, what kinds of dilem­mas about identity emerged, and what types of ethnic conflicts resulted. These findings have broad theoreti­cal implications for understanding the relationship between ethnicity and modem nationalism in general.

This was shown most clearly in the paper presented by Kasian Tajapira of Tharnmasat University in Bangkok. He argues that the usual view of the Chinese

DECEMBER 1994

in Thailand a the most as imilated and accepted of Chinese minoritie in Southeast Asia i misleading. Early 20th-century Thai nationalism had an explicitly anti-Chinese and racist component, and King Vajiravudh went so far as to label the Chinese as "the Jews of the Orient." By excluding what had been an increasingly as imilated and mixed urban Sino-Thai population, Thai nationali ts created an "uncommu­nity" in order to timulate cohesion among other cul­turally di parate Thai people . Thi continued under the military dictatorship that took power in 1932 and its ucce or. But because Thai nationalists chose a capitali t path of development, they could not dispen e with Chinese capital and skill, so that their anti-Sinici m was alway contradictory. At the highest levels top political and bureaucratic figure dealt directly with important Chinese entrepreneurs, and at lower levels the Sino-Thais successfully evolved into a modem urban middle class.

The years of economic boom in the 1970 and 1980 have therefore produced a paradox. As the mid­dle class has grown more assertive and powerful, it has remained disproportionately Chine e. For many decades, Chine e intellectuals were un ure of their identity. Some turned to a far left that promi ed non­racist, internationalist solutions to ethnic problems. But as that po sibility has faded, and as they have become ever more pro perous, many have begun to earch for a new, more Chinese identity. They are

"relearning" Mandarin Chinese (though their ancestors were not Mandarin speakers), and they are simultane­ously staking out prominent po itions in middle-class urban Thai cultural and political activities. Young mid­dle-class Sino-Thai tend to be among the most cos­mopolitan, well educated, and therefore democratic and meritocratically oriented of Thais. But this raises the possibility of new conflicts with a society who e military and bureaucratic elites at the top, and who e large rural and new urban migrant population at the bottom do not always share similar attitudes or wishes.

The paper presented by Stephen Beller, then a fel­low at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, sugge ts a disturbing parallel. By the late 19th cen­tury, assimilated, that is to say Germanized, cos­mopolitan Jews in Vienna had gained a disproportion­ately large role in the professions and in the high cul­turallife of the city. But it turned out that they had assimilated to a dazzling, liberal Central European culture that was not genuinely representative of the

ITEMsI9l

re t of Vienna or provincial Au tria, which were more parochial and becoming narrowly nationali tic. The inten e new anti-Semiti m that arose at the time wa omething new a it was not primarily the re ult of

any traditional di like of non-Chri tian petty mer­chants. In its anti-liberaJi m and anti-co mopolitani m it was part of a whole rejection of the ocial conse­quences of the Enlightenment. Perhap the great depre ion that began in 1873 caused thi , but the fact that it wa a pan-European phenomenon that lasted into the middle of the next century uggests deeper root . In any case, conventional explanation about "middleman minoritie "S or reified notions of eternal Chri tian anti-Semiti m have little explanatory power in this ca e.

Victor Karady from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Pari , pre en ted a whole theory of Jewish-gentile relation in Central Europe but concentrated on the Hungarian example. There, by the late 1800 , as in Thailand a half century later, the con ervative elite came to rely on Jewi h capital for its modernization project, and an alliance was worked out that permitted Hungarian Jews, almo t alone in Central Europe, to gain the kind of business preemi­nence that they were reputed to have, but actually lacked almo t everywhere el e. Thi aJliance and offi­cial tolerance lasted more or Ie intact until the Nazi occupied Hungary in 1944. A a re ult, the urviving as imilated urban Jew of Budape t felt more at home in po twar Hungary than their urviving counterpart el ewhere in Central Europe, and a larger portion of them remained in place than in neighboring countrie . But the communi t period pre ented them with a familiar dilemma. Some Jew were favored becau e they were untainted by fasci m, and a few had been active communists long before 1945. But Jew were al 0 denounced for their bourgeoi ,co mopolitan antecedent and their allegiance to Zioni m, and they 10 t their capital. They did, however, keep their "intel­lectual" capital, their educational achievement. and thi has proved more la ting and more consequential than pa t commercial ucce . Not urpri ingly, younger Budape t Jew were disproportionately active in the important di ident movement in the 1980s, though until now, they have not fully re olved que tion

$ See, for ellarnple, the two cI ica! articles by Edna Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagoni ms: The Split-Labor Market," Amuican Sociological Rt'vi~\ 37 (1972): 547-59; and "A Theory of Middleman Minoriti ," Amuican Sociological Rtliitw, 38 (1973): 583-94.

92\ITEMS

about their identity or place in po t-communi t Hungary.

Thrning points: new conflicts phrased in old ways

Edgar Wickberg of the Univer ity of British Columbia gave a paper ummarizing the entire hi tory of the Chine e in the Philippines. De pite a number of major anti-Chine e pogrom by the Spaniard during the colonial era, by the mid-19th century the Filipino Chine e were highly Chri tianized and Hi panicized. Overrepresented among tho e with modem educa­tion , they contributed di proportionately to the politi­cal and cultural movement for independence from Spain. Neverthele s, a combination of new Chine e immigration and attempt to rationalize the colonial state in the late 19th century created a new type of anti-Sinicism that remained pre ent throughout the period of American colonial rule and has not entirely di appeared. Therefore, even now the is ue of Chine e ethnic identity, which i intimately connected to how Filipino nationali t view their nation, has not been re olved.

Taka hi Shirai hi of Cornell Univer ity concen­trated his paper on a narrower topic, the emergence of anti-Sinicism among the Javane e in about 1910. Here, he feel , the evidence i clear. In the late 19th century the Dutch colonial tate modernized itself. A regular bureaucracy replaced quasi-feudal arrange­ments. The Chine e in Java had played an important role as tax farmer and commercial intermediarie between the Javane e and the Dutch, much a the Jew had once had uch a po ition in Eastern Europe. But a Dutch rule became more direct and began to elimi­nate the fuzzy inter tice of the old ociety that had provided for con iderable mixing and mutual toler­ance, the Chine e po ition was threatened. At the arne time, the entirely new phenomenon of mainland

Chine e nationali m (itself a re pon e to European and Japane e incur ion) taught the Javane e Chine e that they belonged to a common nation. Thi produced an outburst of intellectual activity and cau ed educated Chine e to redefine them elve . Both the e et of events, the rationalization and modernization of the Dutch colonial tate and economy, and the new Chine e identity in what had been a politically unas ertive community pu hed the Javane e into redefining thernselve , too. From thi mixture was born a form of Indone ian nationali m with trong anti-Chine e overtone . Neither pure economic nor traditional hi torical explanation uffice to explain

VOLUME 48, NUMBER 4

the conflicts and dilemmas of identity that re ulted. But it i clear that the timing of this change was remarkably con i tent with analogou development in the other cases we were examining.

Hillel Kieval from the University of Washington in Seattle brought thi last point out very clearly in hi account of how accu ation of Jewi h ritual murder of Christian children in Central and Eastern Europe pro­duced some notorious, officially anctioned trial in the late 19th century. Though such accu ations were indeed very old, for many centuries they had been treated as mere folk uperstition unworthy of being dignified by tate authorities. Then, all of a udden, there were a number of uch case that turned into well publicized trial , and the myth of Jewi h blood rituals returned in full force. By looking pecifically at a case from Hungary in the early 1880 ,he hows that none of the ordinary theorie about anti-Semitism work well to explain what happened. It took place in a village where Jewish-peasant relations were good, and in Hungary, where the ruling elites were specifically opposed to anti-Semitism. The fact that there was a wave of such incidents throughout the entire region at the very ame time that a new, anti-Enlightenment and anti-liberal form of anti-Semitism was growing, must have been more than coincidental. Though the out­ward form of the e blood ritual cases may appear to hark back to medieval tales of sorcery and magic spells, the trials were modem events with much deeper implications than if they had been mere sur­vivals of old superstitions.

Chinese business in contemporary Southeast Asia

The final papers were on the Chinese businesses in Thailand and Malaysia. Gary Hamilton from the University of Washington in Seattle pre ented a series of portraits of highly successful Chine e entrepreneurs in Thailand, emphasizing the different requirements for success as the Thai economy modernized. When Siam was a semi-closed, traditional economy, a few Chine e entrepreneurs became wealthy by cultivating close connections with the court. But families that did well in this environment frequently failed to adapt as Thailand opened and joined the global economy. Now different Chinese with more cosmopolitan skills have come to the fore, and the most successful have learned to operate in a multinational, high technology environ­ment. This makes it difficult to characterize successful Sino-Thai entrepreneurs over time, because they have

DEcEMBER 1994

changed as much as Thailand it elf in the pa t century; but it doe empha ize the fact that whatever it i that ha made them uccessful, the capacity to learn and adapt i more important in the long run than inherited capital or po ition.

Jomo K.S. from the Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur ugge ted in hi paper that the po t-indepen­dence New Economic Policy, which wa meant to pro­mote Malay owner hip and control of capital, has al 0

reinforced a particular Chine e way of doing bu ine s. In defen e again t what was correctly perceived to be the anti-Chine e policies of the Malay ian govern­ment, the Chine e have become much more consciou of them elves as a united ethnic group. In the past, they tended to identify with as ociation ba ed on the regional origin in China of their immigrant families, but now they are more united a Chine e.

Malay ian politic are more explicitly tied to ethnic communali m than politic in any of the other Southeast A ian countries we examined. As everal conferees emphasized, a long as economic growth continues at such a high rate, this may not cau e prob­lems. But ethnic differences, far from di appearing, are actually being accentuated. What this might pro­duce if there is ever an economic or political crisis is anyone's gue s. But from what we know about soci­eties divided along ethnic communal line , there are few grounds for complacency.

The dangers of communal definitions in the mod­ern world

Tim McDaniel, a commentator at the conference from the University of California at San Diego, sug­gested to us that the crucial analytical category in our discussion was the "outsider-insider" dichotomy. Whenever new political identities emerge, the que tion is: Who will be included or excluded from group membership? This is a particularly acute problem with modem nationalism, because control of modem states confers so many advantages on the insiders. Tho e excluded are likely to suffer far more than did such communities in pre-modem times, when states were run by and for tiny minorities, and state support was not crucial for the lives of the vast majority. Defining in iders and outsiders according to ascriptive, heredi­tary "blood" criteria in modem states therefore threat­ens to tum politics into inter-communal warfare in which the growing impos ibility of changing identity makes it very difficult for lasting compromise to occur.

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Elizabeth Perry, a commentator from the University of California at Berkeley, warned u against trying to impo e a " tages of modernization" model on our work. Attempts to find uch univer al tage, ba ed on West European economic hi tory, have been ubjected to three decade of critici m because they

led to unju tified as umptions about the superiority of the We t.

Neverthele ,after 0 much debunking, omething remain to the theory of "modernization." My own conclu ion, hared by orne but not all of the confer­ence participants, is that it consi t of omething more than the obviou technological and demographic change . It includes the notion that the only way of

navigating the tran ition to modem nationali m and powerful state tructures without creating a high potential for ethnic warfare is to in i t on the Enlightenment notion that it is individual rather than hereditary communitie that po e s political right . Mo t Central and East European ocietie never accepted thi ,even as they modernized materially. The people in thi region, not ju t Jew , have paid dearly for this. Whether any or all Southeast Asian ocieties are likely to make the arne error a they go on to ever greater material ucce is a que tion we barely touched on, and it i far from being re olved. It might be the ubject for another, and even more heatedly controversial conference. •

Elbridge Sibley Dies

Elbridge Sibley, executive as ociate emeritus and former SSRC taff member, died on October 10, 1994. Mr. Sibley' connection to the SSRC began in t 938-39 when he wa the recipient of a grant-in-aid to tudy demographic factors underly­ing the formation of ocial c1asse in the United States. "The cour e of my career had been changed ... " he wrote, "by a grant-in-aid of a few hundred dollars ... which re cued me from omnolence in a very plea ant but i olated academic grove."·

At a time when wartime demands on the Council' Washington office reached their peak and po twar problem of di placed ocial cienti t were being anticipated, he joined the Council in Augu t 1944 a fellow hip ecretary and member of the re earch planning staff. Until his retirement in 1970, Mr. Sibley admini tered a variety of train­ing and research program , but aI 0 conducted major tudies of the problem underlying the development and utilization of ocial science per-onnel. Hi Education of Sociologists in the United

States (Ru ell Sage Foundation, 1963; reprinted

94\1n:M

by Greenwood Pre s, 1985) continue to be widely u ed throughout the academic world.

Mr. Sibley served on numerou Council com­mittees, including Mathematics in Social Re earch, Social Stratification, Sociocultural Context in Delinquency, and Comparative Social Re earch. When he retired, the December 1970 i sue of Items ran an article about him, detailing hi many contri­bution to the field of social cience. In 1974 he was asked by Eleanor Bernert Sheldon, then pre i­dent of the Council, to write an informal history of the SSRC on the occasion of it 50th birthday. It remain an indi pen able account of the first half century of the organization to which Mr. Sibley dedicated 0 much of hi profe ional life.

• Preface to Social SCI~nu R~s~arch Council: TM First Fifty Y~ars. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1974.

VOLUME 48, NUMBER 4

Environmental Discourses and Human Welfare in South and Southeast Asia by Paul Greenough and Anna Tsing*

Which elements of our environment should be consid­ered "re ource " for human use? And just how hould we use them? Recent debates about the environment have made it clear that these are not simple que tion . Imagine, for example, a 500 hectare grassy-jungly patch. Should it be described as "scrub wa te"? A a "prime location for a tourist-bungalow complex"? As "reserve land for tiger and short-tailed deer"? Or as a "site suitable for a refugee camp"? Each description invokes a distinct conception of nature and of humans' place in it. Each arises from a specialized activity: land tax collection, tourism, conservation practice, human rights activism. Each mobilizes its adherent . These discourse , and the conte ts that develop between them, are necessarily consequential. They are also an opening for scholar to under tand how people truggle to control their worlds.

Recent scholarship on the environment has increas­ingly begun to recognize the importance of the discur­ive shaping of environmental policies and practice .

We understand "di course" to involve both ways of peaking and clu ters of non-verbal practice ,a these

create and maintain distinctions and identitie . Our interest is not to eparate "language" and "practice" as if linguistic categories gained power merely by being invented. We begin with the inextricability of lingui -tic and non-linguistic practices in making both mean­ing and politics. Knowledge of the environment, we argue, is ocially constructed in environmental prac­tices, and it is the practical significance of knowledge that make it always already political. The intertwin­ing of knowledge and practice become particularly obvious where multiple frameworks for de cribing and using a single terrain are in competition.

Discourse create objects of environmental knowl­edge and agendas for environmental action. For exam­ple, nature i made and unmade, claimed and unclaimed, through the production and deployment of

-Paul Greenough i profe sor of history at the Center for International and Comparative Studie • University of Iowa. Anna Tsing is sociate profe sor of anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz.

DECEMBER 1994

property rights discourses. Political disagreements about how to live in nature-e.g., tho e that divide local farmers and national officials, or those that divide environmental activi ts and timber company spoke men-involve divergent discursive frameworks for understanding "the environment." As environmen­tal issues assume an increasing visibility in political and cultural debates in both South and Southea t Asia, cholarly understanding of environmental di courses

in these areas becomes pre ing. Yet, in part becau e of the interdi ciplinary nature of such inve tigation­which necessarily spans and tran forms knowledge acro the humanities and natural and ocial sci-ence -the work of theorizing environmental di course is still in its infancy. We believe that such theoretical work is best done in relation to concrete environmen­tal developments, such as tho e that are shaped within the culture and history of a particular place. The Joint Committees on South and on Southeast Asia have therefore designed a conference to study environmen­tal discour es in these adjacent regions. Through a erie of interlinked but locally situated studies, we

hope to timulate cholarly discussion of the politics of environmental knowledge.

Wild nature in the discourses of development and environmentalism

Since World War II, one environmental discourse has gained a singular power to define environmentally differentiated spaces in the Third World: the di cour e of development. Development discourse delineates a progres ive narrative in which humans gain increasing control over an unpredictable nature; places and peo­ples are targeted for development to the extent that they are still mired in the vagaries of nature. In recent years, this discourse has not 10 t its powerful hold, yet a counter-di course has gained increasing importance: environmentalism. Environmentali m creates a differ­ent agenda for "nature." In development di course, nature i the raw material from which human well­being can be wre ted; in environmentalist di cour e, human and inter-species well-being requires that nature be con erved and protected. The contrasts between these two agendas inform debates about the environment.

Competition and overlap between the e two agen­das can be een, for example, in relatIon to that domain imagined as "wild nature." Thi i the nature that i not cultivated in permanent field nor built

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upon in recognized settlements: fore ts, brushland , wamp , mountains, rivers, ocean . Le patially

defined forms of nature uch as weather, wildlife, nat­ural di aster , and di ease , are aI 0 imagined a "wild." Wild nature is culturally con tituted in both development and environmental di course ; it i , re pectively, that which i mo t uitable for develop­ment and that which is mo t important to preserve. What i 10 t in such constructions are the pre ence, interest , and activitie of people: fi hers, forager , and hifting cultivator . We believe that the problem of compo ing, de troying, pre erving, narrating, debating, and tran forming wild nature in South and Southeast A ia will be particularly illuminating of the dynamic of environmental discourse. In exploring con truction of nature, we al 0 nece arily make pre­ferred pre ents and future , with their narrative of human well-being, an object of our concern. Our focus, then, could be said to be "the naturalization of nature," and its key corollary, "the development of development. "

Although we argue for the power of discourse of development and environmentalism in South and Southeast Asia, we do not imagine them to control all the ways people understand and talk about their envi­ronments. Indeed, one of the most exciting aspects of studying nature in South and Southeast Asia is pre­cisely the insufficiency of this European-derived cate­gory to cover the many local forms of narration, clas­sification, and meaningful practice that have devel­oped in the e regions. Fore ts, for example, are rede­fined and reclaimed through a large variety of environ­mental discourses-involving indigenous forest ecolo­gies, village grazing practices, urban romanticism, bureaucratic cientific fore tries, plantation labor rela­tions, touri t wildlife parks, religiou epistemologie, national map-making, and much more. Our project involves careful ethnographic attention to local under­standings as we also attend to locaI/globaIlinkage . We plan neither to raise cases as i olated monads nor to depict an increasing global homogeneity; we encourage the simultaneous u e of culturally compara­tive and world system frameworks. Thus, for exam­ple, recent work on fore t management practices in Kalimantan, Indone ia, has shown the gap between national policy and local Dayak strategies and under­standings of forest u e, while a similar gap in central and western India has brought aboriginals and peas­ants into oppo ition with not only the government but

96\1n;MS

aI 0 the World Bank. But the two do not exi t side by ide as autonomou cultural alternatives: National

development policy has criminalized local manage­ment practice , creating situation in which commu­nity livelihoods involving water and forest u e require refu al of official demand . When environmentali ts tep into uch ituations, they create an even more

complex polyvocality; sometime , they may even make unwitting alliances with national developer .

Although environmentalism and development have come to compete in recent years, a narrow focu on the pre ent i one of the pitfall to avoid in interrogat­ing development di course, which frequently obliter­ate the pre-colonial and colonial past. Again and again they begin their torie with the moment of "decolo­nization," rein cribing an alway troubling periodiza­tion. An important aim of our forthcoming conference will be to recon truct the 1 8th- and 19th-century lin­eages of expert knowledge, policy prescription , and concrete practices that haunt contemporary environ­mental tellings. Scholars have already begun this task of unraveling the hi tory of South and Southeast Asian fore t use and abu e, but much remains to be said about the way soils, seeds and genetic re ource , water, weather, wildlife, etc., were embedded in and extracted from the live of Asian people . One of our motive , then, is to hi toricize the different efforts of expert, i.e., scientific, accounts to frame, and at times denigrate, indigenous environmental competence. The discordant and i olated voice of past European observers require a more attentive review of di course conte ts among "experts" under colonial regimes. Indian provincial authorities, for example, waged a spirited defense of the effectivene s of village-man­agement of fore t in Madras in the 1870 , being finally overruled by naked bureaucratic authority that favored wholesale expropriation to the tate of India's timber resources. The alliance-or the appearance of an alliance-of intere ts between provincial Victorian officials and fore t-dwelling aboriginals in the matter of forest control is perhaps unexpected, but what is even more surprising is that this specific information has become a useful re ource for contemporary efforts to wre t control of local fore ts away from the post­colonial state.

Contending discourses in theory and practice

Environmental discourses-gathered from materials as various as oral tale , subsistence practices, scien-

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tific project , corporate strategie , NGO propo al , and U.N. policy tatements-are con equential. They erve to replenish, undermine, or remake knowledge

about the nature of "nature" and about the place and purpo e of humans in specific phy ical etting . Such di cour e are implicated in tabilization and trans­formations of the land cape. In orne case they enjoin de truction of the fore t or animal a a group' high­e t and mo t moral ambition; in other case, the pro­tection of every twig or bird i the acme of religion. We want particularly to under tand the increasingly common situation in which differing stories come into conflict over material and ymbolic intere t in nature.

But how, as a matter of theory, i the environment di cursively haped in South and Southeast Asia? What are the notions of "nature" and "development" that are a umed, conserved, contradicted, de troyed, and tran formed in the narrative practice and ocial relation of pecific South and Southeast A ian soci­etie ? What vi ions and revi ions of di courses of development po it nature alternatively as object of, or a agent in, conceptions of the environment? What are the hi tori cal and political and economic forces that compel people to account for nature in one way rather than another? At what point , under what condition , do such naturalizations of nature crumble and di -cour e about the environment fail?

Here again the notion of wild nature-alway a con truction that has no meaning apart from human invocation-i analytically u eful. On the one hand, the wild is an object created by powerful di cour e ; on the other hand, the wild i that which i thought to e cape human control and intentionality. A focus on wild nature thu allow u to bring up i ues of the unpredictable, perhap uncanny, forms of non-human agency in which nature "talks back" to it objectifica­tion . Natural di asters-flood , epidemics, drought , earthquake -have a distinctive temporal ignificance, on the one hand marking the unob ervable world of tectonic, pathogenic, and bio pheric energy accumula­tion and it udden release, on the other hand writ­ing-in death and du t-the break with normal expectation when human project come to nothing. Such calamitie intrude with an urgency that sugge t implacable will, and ordinary as well a cientific di -cour e are rife with allu ion to hubri and comeup­pance. The e too will be ubjects for inve tigation.

The where and the what that tructure environmen­tal talk in South and Southeast A ia offer diverse c1as-

DECEMBER 1994

ification , oppo ition , and concatenations that beg for critical examination. On the one hand, there are development-oriented national and international poli­cie that map economic-ecological zone , defined by their relation hip to development ideal ,onto the national land cape. The e are zone of economic po -ibilitie -for ub i tence, re ource extraction, indu -

trialization, etc. They are al 0 c1as ifications of com­munitie ,resource-use trategie, and technological regime . Thu , for example, in Indone ia, "fore t " are i olated as a landscape category and then divided into "production," "conver ion," and "protection" paces. Similarly, e tablished la h-and-burn rice cultivators tend to be classified (before-development) as "primi­tive ,It while irrigated rice cultivators are merely "poor." The e are influential c1as ification . Even in arguing for local rights or con ervation need , scholars have known the boundarie of "local" ocial-ecologi­cal paces only by following the line of the e national and international land cape-divi ion policies.

On the other hand, development trategies ome­time envi age nature not as a erie of zone but a a et of profitable re ource . Here the well-establi hed

concept of "habitat" has been u ed to map, and then grant or deny access to, a wide variety of plants or animals of economic, cientific, or touri tic ignifi­cance. In recent years, the more elaborate concept of "biodiversity" has been draped acro entire terrain to redefine all pecie as living archive of evolutionary information. Such information has value, a particularly triking example being "pro pecting" for medically

active wild plants and for genetic re ources from crop plants. Such re ource-extraction agendas create nature a capital-a torehou e of commoditie pre-fit for a global trade network that need no classification and no boundarie , but only the experti e of the market. Increasing attention now gets paid to local form of experti e, and the long-derided herbali t forest-product collector and the indigenou healer become udden partner in multinational enterpri e. Owner hip negoti­ation leap over the ocial and ecological c1as ifica­tion of development zone mapping to imagine a level playing field in which villager and corporate lawyers can bargain freely. The pecific of this rapidly burgeoning development alternative demand di cu ion of the heterogeneitie and hi torical hift that characterize development di courses in South and Southeast A ia.

A di cour e of development are manipulated and

ITEMsI97

refonned, urprising alliances and oppo itions ari e. For example, convergence have emerged in the rhetoric of con ervation organizations and commercial enterpri e . Phannaceutical finn come together with environmental programs in producing narratives of entrepreneurial but ecologically self-conscious natives. Thus, a finn called Shaman Phannaceuticals create a oft-focus image of ecologically grounded "native" as

it extracts infonnation for patentable drugs, while The Sorcerer's Apprentice Program of Con ervation International u e imilar image to re u citate knowl­edge of the natural world for young, alienated "natives." Both commercial and con ervation organi­zations u e torie that fuse native and nature to cre­ate their own niches in international legal and property sy tern and metropolitan funding flow . South and Southeast A ian environmental NOO' also construct image of nature-loving entrepreneurial natives for u e as these NOO's negotiate with the national govern­ment on ethnic minority policie and with multina­tional companies on resource patent rights. Yet the e latter agendas are al 0 informed by di courses on social equity and civil and human rights; the units in the e ocial ju tice di courses tend to be "communi­ties" rather than individual .

Environmentalism has not entered South and Southeast Asia in a monolithic fonn. Scholars have remarked the emergence of a "Standard Environmental Narrative" in South Asian intellectual and activi tlNGO circles. The contour of this narrative i that of an inverted L, or a plateau punctuated by a drop, according to which table and benign environ­mental interactions in the pre-and early-colonial period were followed by a rapid de cent into environ­mental di order and rural want after the mid-19th cen­tury. In accounting for this fall, scholar have indicted colonial laws, institution , and ideologies. This i , essentially, a nationali t narrative in green that clo ely parallels the aga of colonial SUbjection, and it has become very influential. In Southeast Asia, social and political agendas are al 0 influential in constructing environmentalism, but the storie that build a relation­ship between colonialism, nationalism, and the envi­ronment are ometimes quite different. The contrast i perhaps mo t striking for Malaysia, where official spokesper ons have effectively labeled environmen­talism a neocolonial imposition. Indeed, in re ponse, local people fighting environmental policy in Malaysia have sometime self-con ciously allied

98\1lliMS

themselves with colonial precedent. There are also, however, hi torical links and over­

lap between the environmentali m of South and Southeast A ia. For example, in colonial India and Java, intense tie between Briti h and Dutch botanical garden , beginning in the 19th century, accompanied the acculturation of once-exotic pecie uch a cin­chona, rubber, and eucalyptu . More recently, the blo soming of environmental activi m in each region has relied in part on organizational tie and the copy­ing of organizing models acro regions. Environmen­tali t movement and group in both region have achieved global prominence; the Chipko movement in South A ia and Sahabat Alam Malay ia in Southeast A ia both tand out. Thi prominence has meant that both region have been recognized as key to the for­mation of a" outhern" environmentalist trategy. Thi project, then, addres es both national and regional specificitie in the development of environmentalist di cour es and cro -national, cro -regional, and tran national tie .

The discourse , however, are not always discrete. An intriguing example is the recent flouri hing of "ecotourism," that is, forms of touri m de igned both to allow touri ts to view wild environments and, ideally, to u tain those environments. Promoters of ecotourism

hope to please both government officials demanding development and environmentali ts demanding pre er­vation of nature. Like ethnic touri m, with which it is often linked or fused (as wild nature and wild or authentic people are jointly packaged), ecotourism both tap and timuJates We tern desire to experience omething pristine and untouched. Unlike mo t other

form of tourism, however, it elf-consciously (if para­doxically) proclaims its goal as con ervation, and it joins fantasies of the wild with rhetorics of well­planned management and re ource utilization. Although few developers have gone as far as the Japane e (an artificial indoor beach near Tokyo include computer­generated wave , de igned to be ever-so-slightly unpredictable), South and Southeast Asians have been promoting with increasing enthu iasm their mountains and coral reefs, rhinoceri and orangutans, and even their native peoples. The emerging discourses are deployed by various actors (officials, developer , travel agencie , and tourists, as well as the touristed) toward different ends-whether to remove local peo­ple from their land, or to return them to it on condition that they dress and behave as environmentally proper

VOLUME 48, NUMBER 4

displays. And, although the emergent quality of these discourses and practices is part of their inter-e t, they too have lineages which may be explored­for example, in natural history museums, where the great mammal halls were created by white hunters at once enthralled with nature and detennined to cap­ture and preserve it, taxidennically, for all time.

Another arena with unexpected overlap and conver­gence is the history of environmental science; cer­tainly, both development discourses and environmen­talism argue for their respective scientific legitimacy. Environmental science has played its own prominent role in shaping South and Southeast Asian environ­ments. This applies not only to landscape-altering dis­ciplines such as scientific forestry. Tropical medicine, for example, helped create the notion of "the tropics," a concept that has influenced colonial and post-colo­nial environmental and developmental policies. The histories of science and of medicine offer additional opportunities to investigate the changing interface of local and scientific know ledges. (The recent rising prominence of medically oriented ethnobotany recalls the earlier natural history reliance on diverse local understandings of plants.) It is in the e slippery, unequal, and contested fields, where various forms of knowledge and practice come together, that we expect to find the most exciting dynamics of environmental discourse.

Less well attended by scholarship to date but no less promising for the project's goals are the very diverse discourses of development-micro- and macro-eco­nomics, planning and population tudies, food science, locational analysis, instructional broadcasting, demon­stration projects, and ocial marketing. If these fonni­dable techniques in various combinations have largely failed to effect the goal of" ustainable development, " it is regularly attributed to governments failing to exert ufficient "political will." Yet the goal of development

itself is very differently seen by different governments, some linking it to permanent and wholesale entry into global capitalist markets, others to a moderation of needs and de ires among those who live in cities as well as those who plow and sow. Like the evolving and overlapping narratives of environmentalism, special­ized development discourses move swiftly between South and Southeast Asia, carried by intermediaries as

DECEMBER 1994

various as World Bank economi ts and the in urgents who in 1994 launched from ground-level the "Fifty Years [of the Bank] is Enough" movement.

Background and design

The propo ed conference on environmental dis­courses, planned for the winter of 1995, emerges from concerns raised over the last several years by members of the Joint Committees on South Asia and on Southeast Asia about rapid and appalling exploitation of forests, river, and soils, and the impact of this exploitation on regional societie . These concerns have already led to preliminary meetings in 1992 and 1993. In designing a conference with a focus on South and Southeast Asia, we hope to draw on the partici­pants' regional and cross-regional knowledge, which will ground our discussions and contribute to cultur­ally and historically informed conclusions. We also hope to explore a number of cross-regional conver a­tions involving both development and environmental­ism. Hitherto South and Southeast Asia have often been linked in di cussing problems of poverty and development. (When conference organizer want to show the economic vitality of Asia, they link East and Southeast Asia; when they want to discuss Asian poverty, they link South and Southeast Asia.) Similarly, di cussions of disease, hygiene, and popula­tion ince the Victorian age have brought together the South and Southeast Asian "tropics." These kinds of cro s-regional tropes will highlight both heterogeneity and historical interconnections. Conference partici­pants will be asked to write "case studie ," that is, concrete and situated analyses. No single analytic approach will be prescribed; however, by inviting interdisciplinary thinkers with training in the humani­ties, natural, and social science , as well as regional experti e, we are hoping for a conversation in which varied approaches to the materiality of nature will challenge and re pond to each other productively. This conver ation will move beyond di ciplinary approaches, which offer only partial understandings of proce ses that range from textual to institutional to ecological effects, that tran ect local, regional, national, and international levels, and that connect real villagers' talk to state, corporate, and interna­tional agency perspectives.

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Current Activities at the Council New Staff Appointment

Ramon S. Torrecilha has been named program director of the Committee for Public Policy Re earch on Contemporary Hispanic I ue, replacing Felix V. Mato Rodrfguez who has joined the faculty of Northeastern University. Mr. Torrecilha received a Ph.D. in ociology from the Univer ity ofWiscon in, Madi on (1991), and an M.A. from Portland State Univer ity (1986). Prior to joining the Council, he was director of the Minority Affairs Program at the American Sociological A oci­ation (ASA), and an as i tant pro­fes or at the Univer ity of California, Irvine, where he also served on the Executive Commit­tee of the ChicanolLatino Studies Program.

Mr. Torrecilha bring to the Council first-hand knowledge in program development and imple­mentation of research agenda- et­ting, and training programs for minority cholars. As director of the ASA's Minority Affairs Program, he provided national coordination, leadership, and administration of the Minority Fellow hip Program and the Minority Opportunities through School Transformation Program.

Mr. Torrecilha's areas of research include race and ethnicity, popu­lation, stratification, curriculum reform, and aging. Among his recent publications are "The Older Population: Demographic, Social, and Economic Trends" (with Judith Treas), in Reynolds Farley, editor, Changes and Challenges: America 1990, Volume IT, Social Trends (Russell Sage, forthcom-

)OO\IlCMS

ing); and "Sociology of Race and Ethnicity: Strategie for Comparative Multicultural Courses" (with Dennis 1. Downey), Teaching Sociology (1994). Currently he i engaged in a num­ber of re earch projects focu ing on marital stability among Puerto Rican , household formation among Latino immigrant , and the pedagogy of the ociology of race and ethnicity.

African Archives and Museums Project: 1994

The loint Committee on African Studie recently awarded the fourth round of grants under the African Archive and Museums Project (AAMP). Supported with funds from the Ford Foundation, the AAMP eeks to invigorate and trengthen

the work of archives and museums in Mrica. It operates as an annual grants competition, awarding up to $15,000 to African archives and museum for activities that will enable these financially pressed cultural in titutions to broaden their con tituencies and reconfigure their roles as centers of humanistic knowledge. Admin­istered with the help of an inter­national selection committee,· the AAMP supports efforts to pre-

-Selection committee members include Christraud M. Geary. FJiot FJisofon Photographic Archives, N tiona! Museum of African Art, The Smithsonian Institution; Duduzile Mbaakanyi, University of Botswana Library; Mohamed Mbodj, University Chcikh Anla Diop, and Columbia University; Samuel Njovana, National Archives of Zimbabwe; John Wembah-Rashid, Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi; and Doran R , Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles.

serve and augment significant but e pecially endangered collection ; document, catalogue, and exhibit special holdings; and enhance public and scholarly u e of archival and mu eum re ources. It i e pecially receptive to project that draw on local expertise and community re ources and bring together in titution in coopera­tive venture .

The 1994 competition drew 52 proposals from 26 African coun­trie outh of the Sahara. Thirteen projects were funded:

• Museu do Dundo, Dundo, Angola. To reorganize and create an updated inventory of the pho­tographic collection. A detailed inventory of the collection, which has over 13,000 ethnographic photograph , will enhance local acce s and open the way for scholarly exchanges with other in titutions.

• National Archives of the Republic of Benin, Porto-Novo, Benin. To publish an inventory of the holdings on political affair . The archives, which is currently undergoing reorganization, houses a rich and diverse collection of documents on the administrative, political, economic, and social life of Benin under French colo­nial rule. The new inventory will facilitate access to an important and popular portion of the archives.

• Botswana National Archives and Records Services, Gaborone, Botswana. To conduct a month­long training seminar on paper conservation and document repair for archival staff. Since 1985 the archives has served as a deposi­tory for all current government

VOLUME 48, NUMBER 4

records, yet at present there is no paper conservation laboratory anywhere in Botswana. The train­ing eminar will provide the archivi ts with hand -on learning geared to the specific problems of their institution's holdings.

• National Museum, Monu­ments and Art Gallery, Gaborone, Botswana. To create a compre­hensive data bank of known zoo­logical and herbarium specimens from Bot wana. Creating the data bank, and upgrading the computer kills of the curatorial staff who

will use it, i a neces ary step in a long-range plan to fill the gaps in the National Museum's natural history collection.

• Palace of Bafut, Yaounde, Cameroon. To inventory, acce -ion, and curate the palace art

trea ures of Bafut, a chiefdom in the Bamenda Gra sfield region of Cameroon. This important regional collection include masks, statuary, wooden tool, and ironware. The objects con ti­tute a rich history of the area which will be made acces ible to a community of diverse ages and levels of education.

• National Museum of Eritrea, Asmara, Eritrea. To rehabilitate the storage space in the mu eum's archeology wing, housed in a for­mer palace built at the tum of the century under Italian rule. The collections in the national museum of the newly-independent Eritrea range from ancient rock art and tone tools to weaponry u ed in

the war of liberation. Reorgani­zing the underground tore rooms will enable the mu eum to better manage and care for the country's rich cultural heritage.

• Mombasa Old Town Conser­vation Office, Mombasa, Kenya.

DECEMBER 1994

To upport a community-based education program on the archi­tectural con ervation of old town Momba a. The Mombasa Old Town Con ervation Office opened in 1989 to coordinate the preser­vation of the hi torical urban areas along the Kenyan Swahili coast. Public understanding of the benefits and re ponsibilities of conserving urban space is central to the office' ucce s.

• National Library and Ar­chives of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia. To microfilm Namibian newspapers. At pre ent no ingle institution in Namibia has a com­plete et of all Namibian newspa­pers and very few have complete ets of pecific title . The micro­

film project, a joint venture with the South African Library in Cape Town, will make the newspapers available within Namibia for tudy and re earch.

• National Museum, Benin City, Nigeria. To inventory and con-erve the holdings in Chief Nana's

Palace, a national monument in Benin City. Chief Nana, "the mer­chant prince of the Niger delta," ro e to prominence as a trader in 1884. His wide-ranging collection of hou ehold good and divina­tory objects be peaks an inter-eth­nic dialogue based on commerce and kinship in the delta area.

• Direction des Archives du Senegal, Dakar, Senegal. To mount a documentary exhibit commemorating the centenary of French We t Africa, a region com­pri ed of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Benin, and Togo. The exhibit will u e archival material to explore the changing vi ions and realities of regional economic and ocial inte-

gration during the colonial and po t-colonial periods.

• Natal Museum, Pietermar­itzburg, South Africa. To convene a workshop on the coordination of contemporary cultural and politi­cal collecting in South Africa. A number of mu eums and cultural centers have undertaken projects to document and exhibit the mem­orabilia of South Africa's recent past, yet there is no in titutional coordination on either a regional or national level. With the vi ual evidence of the apartheid era fast di appearing, coordinating col­lecting policies and priorities is a key concern.

• South African Museum, Cape Town, South Africa. To organize a travelling exhibit of the Krige photographs to the Lovedu region where they were taken over 50 years ago. The photographs com­prise a unique vi ual record of the ocial and cultural life of the

Lobedu people in the late 1930 . Using "dual" caption expressing local and outsider views from the pre ent and the pa t, the exhibit will contribute to a growing inter­e t in cultural hi tory and heritage.

• The Uganda Society, Kam­pala, Uganda. To consult with a document con ervator who will help design a con ervation man­agement program for the Society' collection of books, map , and photographs on Uganda and East Africa. The Society, which was revived last year, hope to re-e tabli h its role as a prominent forum for the dis emination of knowledge about Uganda, a role it held for over 50 years. Advice on con ervation and management of the collection is e pecially urgent becau e of in ect damage and paper deterioration.

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Culture, Health, and Human Development

Under its program on Cultural Constructions of Human Develop­ment, the Committee on Culture, Health, and Human Development was invited to participate in a sym­posium at the biennial meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development in Amsterdam on June 30-July 3. The basic purpose of this sympo­sium was to convey how the com­mittee's deliberations, and the research of its members, are help­ing to shape emerging scholarly attempts to understand-in tex­tured, comparative terms-how cultures mediate and modulate human experience, action and development.

Immediately following the Amsterdam symposium, and under its Program on Health, Suffering, and Social Transfor­mations, the committee organized an international conference on "Social Suffering" at the Rockefeller Foundation's Confer­ence Center in Bellagio. Partici­pants were drawn from the hum­anities, ocial sciences, medicine and public health.' The meeting was aimed at creating a colloquy on the forms of social uffering in

I 11Ie meeting was organized by Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University; Veena Das, University of Delhi; and Margaret Lock, McGill University. Participants included Talal Mad, New School for Social Research; Adelberto Bart'eto, Instituto Conceitos Culturais, Brazil; John Bowker, Cambridge University; E. Valentine Daniel, University of Michigan; Julio Frenk, National Institute of Public Health, Mexico; Stephen Graubard, Brown University; Anne Harrin&ton, Harvard University; Lawrence Langer, Simmons College; Robert Lawrence, Rockefeller Foundation; David Morris, Mamphela Ramphele and Pamela Reynolds, University of Cape Town; Vera Schwarcz, Wesleyan University; Tu Wei Ming, Harvard University; Carol Worthman, Emory University; and Allan Young, McGill University.

102\lTEMS

different epochs and cultural con­texts, including their social sources and consequences, in order to deepen and enrich the current discourse on policy, ethics, and re earch concerned with human problems globally. The organizers' particular purpose was the development of an intel­lectual framework that is more detailed and nuanced in its approach to the human dimen­sions of the varieties of suffering; that fo ters examination of chal­lenging theoretical issues, such as the tension between the represen­tation and experience of suffering; and that stimulates research on the proce se through which col­lective and personal trauma come to be experienced in the live of individuals and social group . One corollary purpose was to consider how medicaVpublic health formulations of human problems, and an allied rationaV­technical approach in social pol­icy, might be profitably linked to moral, aesthetic, historical, and religious considerations.

An important dimension was added to the conference by the participation of several young cholars with research interests in

the developing world.2 Supported by a supplementary grant from the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio office, these scholars also joined committee members in a post-conference workshop aimed at laying the foundations for a comparative cross-cultural research program that examines how different communities cope with political violence and dislo­cation. ('The committee has

1 Naomi Adelson, York University; Komatra Cheungsatiansup, Harvard University; Felicia Knaul, Harvard University; Mills Soko, University of Cape Town; and Maya Todeschini, &:ole des H tes &udes en Sciences Sociales.

already received funds from the Foundation's Health Sciences Division for the development of such research.)

More recently, on October 20-23, with support from the Council's Comparative and Trans­national Workshop Competition, the committee held a workshop at the Carter Center in Atlanta on "Ethnopediatrics." The meeting brought together researchers, practitioners, and clinicians from the fields of human development, anthropology, public health and pediatrics3 to consider the con­struction of a research agenda focused on how the intrinsically local and particular nature of cul­turally-constituted beliefs, values, and actions intersects with ocial and physical ecologies to hape child survival, growth and devel­opment. ('The term "ethnopedi­atrics" is meant to point to this in­tersection.) In order to help tim­ulate the pursuit of this agenda, several young scholar were included at the meeting4 through the support of the William T. Grant Foundation.

3 Organizers of the work hop were Carol Worthman, Emory University; Robert leVine, Harvard University; and Jacqueline Goodnow, Macquarie University. Other participants included Ron Barr, Children's Hospital, Mon­treal; Margaret Bentley, The Johns Hopkins University; Peter Brown, Emory University; Suzanne Dixon, University of California. San Diego; Ken Fox, Harvard University; Beatrix Hamburg, William T. Grant Foundation; Sarah Harkness, Pennsylvania State University; Carol Jenkins, Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research; Michelle Lampl, Emory University; Betsy Lozotr, University of Michigan; Reynaldo Manorell, Emory University; Bryan McCarthy, WHO CoUaborating Center; Catherine Panter-Brick, Durham University; and Lonnie Sherrod, William T. Grant Foundation.

4 David Atlyah, Harvard University; Stephen Harper, Emory University; Thomas McDade, Emory University; Usha Menon, University of Chicago; Lebo Setiloane, Tufts University; and Joy Stallings, Emory University.

VOLUME 48, NUMBER 4

Recent Council Publications Population and Environment: Rethinking the Debate, edited by Lourdes Arizpe, M. Priscilla Stone, and David C. Major. Sponsored by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Boulder, Colorado: Westview Pres , 1994, 352 pages.

This interdisciplinary volume places population processes in their social, political, and eco­nomic contexts while it considers their environmental impacts. The contributors, in exploring the sub­tle and complex connections between population and environ­ment, argue that the impact of population on the environment involves not just absolute num­bers of people-nor even just population densities-but al 0

multifaceted social, political, and in titutional factors.

Examining the complex pat­terns of human relation hip that overlay, alter, and distort people's ties to urban and rural landscape , the book includes a significant focus on the experiences and per-pective of poor Third World

women. By probing the many aspects of the relationship between population and the envi-

DECEMBER 1994

ronment, the book offers a more equitable view of development and its global ramifications.

Lourdes Arizpe is director of the Institute for Anthropological Re earch at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. M. Priscilla Stone is program director for the SSRC Joint Committee on African Studies and David C. Major is program director for the SSRC Committee for Research on Global Environmental Change.

Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, edited by W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz. Spon ored by the Committee on Foreign Policy Studie (1986-1994). Chicago: Univer ity of Chicago Press, 1994. xiii + 308 pages.

Twenty cholars and news ana­Iy ts explain the critical and con­troversial role played by the mass media and public opinion in the development of United States for­eign policy in the Gulf War. At the arne time, the book provide a framework for understanding how the political communication proce work while rai ing que -tion about it. The authors have attempted to expand the normal academic boundaries to com pre-

hend the complex ways in which foreign policy options are man­aged by various political players as they undergo the often ensi­tive process of public scrutiny.

Beyond producing a thorough case study of the Gulf War, the contributors have sought to demonstrate the broad applica­tions of knowledge gained from research in different fields.

W. Lance Bennett is profe or of political science at the Univer­ity of Washington. David L.

Paletz is professor of political sci­ence at Duke University.

Also Noted:

Education and Society in Late Imperial China, 1600-1900, edited by Benjamin A. Elman and Alexander Wood ide. Studie on China 19. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Chine e Studies. Berkeley: Univer ity of California Press, 1994. xvi + 580 pages.

Intellectuels et Militants de l'Islam Contemporain, edited by Gilles Kepel and Yann Richard . Spon ored by the Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies (1985-93). Originally published in French by :Edition du Seuil, Paris, 1990. Arabic translation. London: Dar al Saqi, 1994.

ITEMs/103

A Selection of Council Publications, 1993-1994

ian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modem States of East and Southeast A ia, edited by Charle F. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on Southeast A ia, the Joint Committee on Korean Studie , and the Joint Committee on Japane e Studie . Honolulu: University of Honolulu Pre ,1994. ix + 366 pages.

Chinese FamiJi in the Post-Mao Era, edited by Deborah Davi and Stevan Harrell. Studies on China, 17. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on

Chine e Studie . Berkeley: University of California Pre ,1993. 420 page.

"Economic Liberalization and Democratization: Explorations of the Linkages," edited by Laurence Whitehead. Special is ue of World Development, 21 (8), August 1993. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studie .

Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Ne otiation of Rule in Modem Mexico, edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studie . Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Pre ,1994, xix + 432 page.

Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, edited by Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane. A volume in the Cornell Studies in Political Economy

104\I11:MS

serie , edited by Peter J. Katzenstein. Sponsored by the Committee on Foreign Policy Sludie (1986-1994). Ithaca: Cornell University Pre s, 1993.308 page .

Latin America in the 19405: War and Postwar Transitio edited by David Rock. Spon red by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. xiv + 302 page .

Mexico in Search of Security, edited by Bruce Michael Bagley and Sergio Aguayo Quezada [Engli h­lamguage version of En busca de La seguridad perdida, publi hed in 1990 by Siglo Veintiuno Editore , Mexico.] Sponsored by the Committee on International Peace and Security. Miami: University of Miami, North-South Center, 1993. 367 + ix page .

Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China, edited by Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Shirokauer. Studies on China, 16. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on Chinese Studie . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 437 + xiv pages.

Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies and the Japan Foundation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 496 + xii pages.

Private Lives and Public Policies: Confidentiality and Ac ibiJity of Government Statistics, by George

T. Duncan, Thomas B. Jabine, and Virginia A. de Wolf. A report by the Panel on Confidentiality and Data Acce ,jointly pon ored by the SSRC and the Committee on National Stati tic of the National Re earch Council. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Pres, 1993.274 + ix page.

Southeast Asia in the Early Modem Era, edited by Anthony Reid. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on Southeast A ia. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Pre , 1993. xiii + 286 page.

State and Society in Contemporary Korea, edited by Hagen Koo. Spn ored by the Joint Committee on Korean Studies. Ithaca, New York: Cornell Univer ity Pre s, 1993. viii + 258 page.

"The Structure and Behavior of Economic Organizations: Theoret­ical and Empirical Perspectives," guest eds. Avner Ben-Ner, Josef C. Brada, and Egon Neuberger. Special issue of the Journal of Comparative Economics, 17(2), June 1993. Partially ponsored by the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe.

TramtOnnationderW~

in Ostmitteleuropa!Transforming Economic Sy tems in East Central Europe, edited by Roland SchOnfeld. Spon ored by the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe and the Siido teuropa-Ge ellschaft. Munich: Siido teuropa-Ge ellschaft, 1993. 211 pages.

VOLUME 48, NUMBER 4

President

Social Science Research Council

The board of director invite nominations and application for the position of president of the Social Science Research Council. effective July I. 1995. The Social Science Re earch Council. a not-for-profit scientific and profe ional organization based in New York City. was founded in 1923 for the purpose of advancing research in the social science. Nongovernmental and interdisciplinary. the Council eek to achieve its purpose through a wide variety of national and international programs of research and training in the ocial cience and the cognate discipline of the humanitie . Seven members of the Council' board are elected or ppointed by

national cientific ocietie : the American Anthropological Association. the American Economic A ociation. the American Hi tori cal A sociation, the American Political Science A ociation. the American P ychological A sociation. the American Sociological

A ociation. and the American Stati tical A sociation; the other members are at-large.

The president is the chief administrative and ellecutive officer of the Council. responsible for directing a group of profes ional ocial cienti ts who taff the Council's committees of scholars. and for representing the Council and the social science to the schol­

arly community. to foundation • to government and international agencies. and in public fora.

The pre ident of the Council hould be:

• a di tingui hed social ienti t capable of providing trong intellectual leadership to an interdisciplinary organization

• knowledgeable about the international dimen ions of the ocial ciences and connected to network of social scienti t in

the U.S. and abroad

• an accomplished manager of financial and human resources

• capable of managing and promoting a diverse t of interdi ciplinary re earcb activities and of collaborating with a wide

variety of scholars. funders. and government official

• dedicated to the promotion of intellectual and demographic diversity in the full range of Council program

Review of application and nominations will begin immediately. Completed application • including a letter of interest and a vita, hould be ubmitted by December 31, 1994. Please send all inquiri to:

DECEMBER 1994

Chair. Presidential Search Committee

Social Science Research Council

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ew York, NY 10158

The Social Science R~ch Council is an Equal Opportunity Employer

lTEMs/105

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

605 THIRD AVENUE. NEW YORK, NY 10158

(212) 661-0280 FAX (212) 370-7896

The Council was incorporat~d in the Stat~ of Illinois, D~c~mber 27, 1924, for the purpos~ of advancing ns~arch in the social sci~nc~s. Nongov~rn_ntal and int~rdisciplinary in natur~, the Council appoints committ~~s ofscholDn which suk to achi~~ the Council's purpos~ through the g~n~ration ofn~ id~ and th~ training of scholDn. The activities of the Council are support~d primarily by grants from private foundations and govern_nt agencies.

Directon, 1993-94: PAUL B. BALms, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education (Berlin); ROBEIlT H. BAms, Harvard University; LAWRENCE D. 8080, University of California, Los Angeles; WrWAM CRONON, University of Wisconsin, Madison; DAVID L. F'EAllIERMAN, Social Science Research Council; ALBERT F1sHLOW, University of California, Berkeley; SUSAN TUFTS FIsKE, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; SUSAN HANSON, Clark University; BARBARA HEYNS, New York University; NAOAYO HOMMA, To1cyo Woman's Ouistian University; JOEL SHERZER, University of Texas, Austin; BURTON H. SJN()ER, Princeton University; KENNEll! W. WACHTER, University of California, Berkeley; ANNEm! B. WEINER, New York University; MIOiEU.E J. WHm!, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Ojfic~n and Staff: DAVID L. F'EAllIEIlMAN, Presithnt; STANLEY J. HEt:iINBOIlfAM, Vic~ Presid~nt; RONALD J. 1'ELEcK, Vic~ Presid~nt for Financ~; GLORIA

KntCHHEIMER. Editor; DoIuE SINOCOII, Human Resourc~s Director; ITTY ABRAHAM, BARBARA A. BIANCO, SUSAN BRONSON, ADRIAN (JOSH) DEWIND, ARUN P. El.HANc:E. ERIC HERSHBERO, STEVEN HEYDEMANN, fRANK KEssEL, MIMI M. KIM, ROBEIlT LAllIAM, DAVID C. MAJOR, MARY BYRNE McDoNNELL, Eu..EN PEREcMAN, RICHARD R. PETERsoN, SHERI H. RANts, M. PRISCILLA STONE, RAMON S. TORROCIUIA. TOBY ALICE VOLKMAN, KENI'ON W. WORCESTER.

-r The Social Science Research Council supports the program of the Commission on Preservation and Acces and is represented on the National Advisory

Council on Preservation. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Infonnation Scien~nce of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984. The infinity symbol placed in a circle indicates compliance with !hi standard.

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