Course description
Southeast Asia has been called anything, from a colonial construction to a cold war residual category, an economic miracle without precedence or merely a backyard of its more successful neighbors to the East and the North. This class will focus on the Southeast Asian region in its own right dealing with the ways both Southeast Asia as well as the nations being part of it have been imagined and shaped by various actors in present times; from powerful capitals to its often porous borders, from dominant ethnicities to those living at the margins, and from local nationalist histories to pan regional initiatives such as ASEAN. We will scrutinize ideas of nation, state and citizenship by comparing examples from among others Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Topics dealt with in this 12 week course include labor regimes and social inequalities, the new Asian middle class and its patterns of consumption, technonationalist state projects such as the national car and telecom industries, migration, popular religion, cultural heritage tourism, human rights, new sexual identities and the fate of Southeast Asia’s indigenous people in the 21st century.
What is the place of Southeast Asia in today’s world, and what is its place in the mind of a colorful and widely divergent range of communities, people and citizens? While constantly questioning the merits of a comparative approach this course will strongly emphasize the ways Southeast Asians themselves perceive of their region, as our weekly sessions will include discussion of actual essays, poetry and newspaper clipping on actual issues as well as scholarly analyses of regional experts.
N.B. Besides the classes we are planning a non-compulsory evening program in which we will regularly screen relevant feature movies, documentaries and short films of and dealing with Southeast Asian people and nations. These films will be briefly introduced and are ideally followed by a group discussion.
Coördinator
Dr. Bart Barendregt and Dr. Ratna Saptari
Onderwijsvormen
Lectures 24 hrs = 36 sbu
Group discussions 12 hrs = 24 sbu *
Study of literature 675 pp = 112 sbu
Weekly assignments = 32 sbu *
Final paper 6 pp = 48 sbu
*additional literature (ca.300 pp) included here
Studiemateriaal
King, Victor T and William D. Wilder, 2003, The Modern Anthropology of South-East Asia. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
Electronic Reader (available through Black Board from February onwards)
One monograph to be selected from the following list:
Wilson, Ara, 2004, the intimate economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, tycoons, and Avon ladies in the global city. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cannell, Fenella, 1999, Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
Hardy, Andrew, 2003, Red Hills: Migrants and the State in the Highlands of Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii.
Toetsing
Weekly 1 page assignments (50 % of final assessment);
Participation in discussions (at least 10 out 0f 12 classes should be attended);
Final review essay of one of the monographs using the course literature (50 % of final assessment), to be submitted before week 26 (June 22)
See Blackboard for further instructions.
Rooster
February 17 – May 26 2009, 9-11 h in SA49 (Pieter de la Court Building).
No class on May 5th.
Inschrijving
International exchange and study abroad students need to apply through the International Office of Leiden University.
Dutch students need to enrol at the Secretariate Institute for CA-OS (Wassenaarseweg 52 te Leiden, kamer 3A19, tel. 5273469) before January 15th, 2009.