Centering the Margin: Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands

246 Pages·2006·26.188 MB·English

by  Alexander Horstmann and Reed L. Wadley

Centering the Margin
Asian Anthropologies
General Editors:
Shinji Yamashita, The University of Tokyo
J.S. Eades, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
Volume 1
Globalization in Southeast Asia: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives
Edited by Shinji Yamashita and J.S. Eades
Volume 2
Bali and Beyond: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Tourism
Shinji Yamashita
Volume 3
The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia
Edited by Shinji Yamashita, Joseph Bosco, and J.S. Eades
Volume 4
Centering the Margin: Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands
Edited by Alexander Horstmann and Reed L. Wadley
CENTERING THE MARGIN
Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands
!
Edited by
Alexander Horstmann and Reed L. Wadley
Berghahn Books
New York • Oxford
00-FM-Horstmann XP.qxd:00-FM-Horstmann XP.qxd 9/25/08 5:02 PM Page iv
First published in 2006 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2006, 2009 Alexander Horstmann and Reed L. Wadley
First paperback edition published in 2009
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Centering the margin : agency and narrative in Southeast Asian borderlands /
edited by Alexander Horstmann and Reed L. Wadley
p. cm.—(Asian anthropologies ; v. 5)
Chiefly papers presented in a two-session panel organized for the Third
International Convention for Asian Scholars (ICAS) in Singapore, Aug.
19-22, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84545-019-9 hardback -- ISBN 978-1-84545-591-0 paperback
1. Nomads—Southeast Asia. 2. Ethnicity—Southeast Asia. 3. Minorities—
Southeast Asia. 4. Demographic anthropology—Southeast Asia.
5. Transnationalism. 6. Ethnic barrier—Southeast Asia. 7. Southeast
Asi—Boundaries. 8. Southeast Asia—Ethnic relations. 9. Southeast
Asia—Emigration and immigration. I. Horstmann, Alexander. II.
Wadley, Reed L. III. International Convention for Asian Scholars (3rd:
2003: Singapore) IV. Series.
GN635.S58C46 2006
305.9’069180959—dc22 2006040107
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN 978-1-84545-019-9 hardback
ISBN 978-1-84545-591-0 paperback
CONTENTS
!
Preface vii
Figures and Tables viii
Introduction
Centering the Margin in Southeast Asia
Alexander Horstmann and Reed L. Wadley 1
CENTERINGTHEMARGINI:
CENTERANDPERIPHERYINSOUTHEASTASIANBORDERLANDS
Chapter One
“Once were Burmese Shans”:
Reinventing Ethnic Identity in Northwestern Thailand
Niti Pawakapan 27
Chapter Two
Would-Be Centers: The Texture of Historical
Discourse in Makassar
William Cummings 53
Chapter Three
Political Periphery, Cosmological Center:
The Reproduction of Rmeet Sociocosmic Order and
the Laos–Thailand Border
Guido Sprenger 67
CENTERINGTHEMARGINII:
ETHNICMINORITIESINSOUTHEASTASIANBORDERLANDS
Chapter Four
Premodern Flows in Postmodern China:
Globalization and the Sipsongpanna Tais
Sara Davis 87
Chapter Five
Borders and Multiple Realities:
The Orang Suku Laut of Riau, Indonesia
Cynthia Chou 111
– v–
vi | Contents
Chapter Six
In the Margin of a Borderland: The Florenese
Community between Nunukan and Tawau
Riwanto Tirtosudarmo 135
CENTERINGTHEMARGINIII:
POLITICALECONOMYOFSOUTHEASTASIANBORDERLANDS
Chapter Seven
Deconstructing Citizenship from the Border:
Dual Ethnic Minorities and Local Reworking of
Citizenship at the Thailand–Malaysian Frontier
Alexander Horstmann 155
Chapter Eight
Sex and the Sacred: Sojourners and Visitors in
the Making of the Southern Thai Borderland
Marc Askew 177
Chapter Nine
Narrating the Border: Perspectives from
the Kelabit Highlands of Borneo
Matthew H. Amster 207
Notes on Contributors 229
Index 233
PREFACE
ALTHOUGH THE CONCEPTS OF BORDERLANDSand border crossing
have grown in popularity in recent years, the contributors to this volume
feel that many of the borderlands in Southeast Asia remain virtually
unknown. We thus set out in the footsteps of Edmund Leach, Gehan
Wijeyewardene, and Thongchai Winichakul—scholars who have paved
the way for a renewed focus on the nation-state from the perspective of
the border. This focus is less on the international border per se, than on the
people who live in the borderland, negotiate border crossings in their local
activities, and extend the borderland into central spaces through their
movements. The chapters here explore how people at the border form
translocal and transnational spaces and moral communities, sometimes
bleeding through violence and exploitation, sometimes putting interna-
tional frontiers to their advantage.
This volume brings together anthropologists and historians from the
U.S.A., Europe, Australia, Thailand, and Indonesia who work on the bor-
derlands of Southeast Asia. Most of the papers were presented in a two-
session panel organized by Alexander Horstmann for the Third
International Convention for Asian Scholars (ICAS) in Singapore, 19–22
August 2003. As part of a wider academic network, we hope to promote
further initiatives on Southeast Asian borderlands through this volume.
Since the beginning of this endeavor, the vocabulary of borders and
borderlands has continued to penetrate conferences and workshops
around the world. We hope that these too will encourage sound, empiri-
cal work on borderlands, which may help us recognize the crucial depth
that the borderland concept lends to our questioning of cultural baggage
in Southeast Asian area studies: We have perhaps been too accustomed to
think in terms of the nation-state and lately transnationalism, to the exclu-
sion of the spaces created by the borders.
As it has wound its way to publication, the volume has benefited from
the help of a number of people as have its editors. Hearty thanks are due to
the Asian Anthropologies series editors, Shinji Yamaschita (Tokyo) and
especially Jeremy Eades (Kent, UK/Beppo, Japan), for accepting the vol-
ume in their series and for encouraging us throughout. Thanks are also
extended to Marion Berghahn for her personal and perceptive support, and
to Christopher Duncan for the use of his excellent map of Southeast Asia.
– vii–
FIGURES AND TABLES
Figures
Fig. A.1. Southeast Asia with chapter locations
(copyright Christopher Duncan) 2
Fig. 2.1. Staging the past at Ballaq Lompoa
(photo W. Cummings) 64
Fig. 5.1. Riau and the Growth Triangle 115
Fig. 7.1. Malay men and Thai women in Langkawi
(photo A. Horstmann) 163
Fig. 7.2. Two charismatic monks in Kelantan, Malaysia
(photo A. Horstmann) (p. 249) 169
Fig. 8.1. Religious and sex trade sites in Lower South Thailand 179
Fig. 8.2. Malaysian Chinese visitors paying respect
to the Thao Mahaphrom image in Hat Yai
(photo M. Askew) 188
Fig. 8.3. A“Captain” and bar worker sitting outside
a karaoke lounge, Dan Nork
(photo M. Askew) 195
Fig. 9.1. The border region of the Kelabit Highlands 209
Fig. 9.2. Tom Harrison during World War II, Kelabit Highlands
(photo courtesy of the Sarawak Museum) 213
Fig. 9.3. Guru Paul (far left) with Kelabit Bamboo Band,
Pa’ Mein school, circa 1950
(photo courtesy of the Sarawak Museum) 216
Tables
Table 6.1.Population Size, Density, and Sex Ratio, 1961–2000 138
Table 6.2.Population Growth, 1961–2000 138
– viii–
INTRODUCTION:
CENTERING THE MARGIN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Alexander Horstmann and Reed L. Wadley
New Horizons in Southeast Asian Anthropology
ALTHOUGH BORDERS AND BORDER CROSSINGare by now familiar
terms in anthropology, few ethnographic projects take up the crucial
development of research questions. This volume on agency and narrative
in the borderlands of Southeast Asia is a first attempt in doing just that, by
bringing together the imminent work of borderland studies through a
comparative framework. In a reversal of perspective, the focus of this col-
lection is on the experiences of border people with the state, at the local
level of state borders (e.g., Tokoro 1999). Borders are matrixes of social and
cultural change, dynamic in identity and space, in contrast to essentialized
tradition and community on the state border. This collection aims to illu-
minate some of this agency and challenge the peripheral identities that are
assumed in the national community.
Although it is a relatively recent focus of study, anthropologists increas-
ingly recognize the national border region as an arena of social and cul-
tural change. There is no place where the contradictions inherent in
bounded collectivities and their representations could be more pro-
nounced. In fact, the very notion of the state border or boundary has his-
torically been a driver of ethnogenesis—the production and invention of
ethnic groups and minorities (e.g., Nugent and Asiwaju 1996).
While permeable and ambiguous national borders can be said to play
a crucial role in Anderson’s (1983) work on the imagined community of
the modern nation, as well as in Thongchai’s (1994) groundbreaking study
on the emergence of a hierarchical ethnogeography of modern Siam, it is
astonishing how little attention has been given so far to the agency of bor-
Endnotes for this chapter begin on page 21.
2 Alexander Horstmann and Reed L. Wadley
der people in Southeast Asia. There are thus good reasons why the study
of borders in Southeast Asia and their borderlands is timely. For example,
Thongchai shows that the formation of the territorial Thai geo-body
implies, from the very beginning, a hierarchical relationship of the nation-
al center and the Other, not only in terms of class and status, but in terms
of an ethnogeography as well (see Vandergeest and Peluso 1995).
A.1. Southeast Asia with chapter locations (copyright Christopher Duncan).
To be sure, many scholars have written ethnographies on the transfor-
mation of ethnic minorities’ livelihoods on the borders. No ethnographic
collection can afford to ignore the pioneering role of Edmund Ronald
Leach in deconstructing the notion of national borders and in his seminal
emphasis on the dynamism of social space through group exchange
(Leach 1954, 1960). This collection comes very much in the spirit of Leach,
in that it highlights the reconceptualization of communities at the border
through movement and identification.
On the one hand, as Tapp (2000) remarks (not without self-criticism),
scholars of ethnic minorities tend to essentialize the identities of “their”
study populations and underplay the relationships with powerful ethnic
majorities. Yet, on the other hand, anthropologists and geographers have
increasingly challenged the way we view the state’s political organization
and its compartmentalization of the world. Newman and Paasi (1998)
argue, for example, that boundaries and their meanings are historically