Civil society in Southeast Asia

287 Pages·2005·3.827 MB·English

by  Hock Guan Lee

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The Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) is funded by the governments of
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden via the Nordic Council of
Ministers, and works to encourage and support Asian studies in the Nordic countries.
In so doing, NIAS has been publishing books since 1969, with more than one
hundred titles produced in the last decade.
The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an
autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of
socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia
and its wider geostrategic and economic environment.
The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES,
including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS),
and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS).
ISEAS Publications, an established academic press, has issued more than
1,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about
Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publications works with many other
academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research
and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.
NIAS edition
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First published in Singapore in 2004 by ISEAS Publications
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir Panjang, Singapore 119614
E-mail: [email protected] • Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg
First published in 2004 by NIAS Press
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
Leifsgade 33, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark
Tel: [phone] • Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [email protected] • Website: http://www.niaspress.dk
for distribution in Europe
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies.
© 2004 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the
editor and contributors and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or
the policy of the Institute or its supporters.
ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Civil society in Southeast Asia / edited by Lee Hock Guan.
1. Civil society—Asia, Southeastern.
2. Political culture—Asia, Southeastern.
3. Religion and politics—Asia, Southeastern.
4. Asia, Southeastern—Ethnic relations—Political aspects.
I.Lee Hock Guan
DS526.7 C58 2004
ISBN 87-91114-54-3 (NIAS soft cover edition)
ISBN 981-230-257-3 (ISEAS soft cover edition)
ISBN 981-230-258-1 (ISEAS hard cover edition)
Typeset by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd
Printed in Singapore by Seng Lee Press Pte Ltd
Contents
Preface vii
About the Contributors ix
1 Introduction: Civil Society in Southeast Asia 1
Lee Hock Guan
2 Islam, Constitutional Democracy, and the Islamic State
in Malaysia 27
Patricia Martinez
3 Cracks in the Wall of Separation?: The Church,
Civil Society, and the State in the Philippines 54
John J. Carroll, S.J.
4 New Buddhism, Urban Space, and Virtual Civil Society 78
Jim Taylor
5 Women’s Movement in the Philippines and
the Politics of Critical Collaboration with the State 101
Carolyn I. Sobritchea
6 Participation of the Women’s Movement in Malaysia:
The 1999 General Election 122
Lai Suat Yan
7 Civil Society Effectiveness and the Vietnamese State —
Despite or Because of the Lack of Autonomy 144
Russell Hiang-Khng Heng
8 Relationship between State and Civil Society in Singapore:
Clarifying the Concepts, Assessing the Ground 167
Gillian Koh and Ooi Giok Ling
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vi CONTENTS
9 Civil Society in Malaysia: An Arena of Contestations? 198
P. Ramasamy
10 Ethnicity and the Civil Rights Movement in Indonesia 217
Thung Ju Lan
11 Civil Society Discourse and the Future of Radical
Environmental Movements in Thailand 234
Chantana Banpasirichote
Index 265
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Preface
This publication grew out of the workshop Civil Society in Southeast Asia,
organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and held in
Singapore in November 2001. Financial support for the workshop came
from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
Over the past two decades, civil society has become an important
catchphrase in political and development discourses because of its
perceived relevance to the quality of governance, empowering public
participation, and sustaining a healthy democracy. In the Southeast Asian
region, the concept indeed influenced many individuals and groups who
were actively engaged in advancing a wide array of interests and causes.
Conversely, the reactions of the Southeast Asian state regimes have
ranged from adroitly co-opting to fiercely rejecting the idea of civil
society. With their diverse colonial histories (except for Thailand which
was never colonized by any European powers), ethnic, religious, and
class stratifications, levels of economic development, and forms of state
regimes, the Southeast Asian region offers an excellent crucible to study
how these factors would shape civil society formation and, in turn, how
it would affect governance and democracy.
The aim of the workshop was to bring together scholars and researchers
from the region to explore the realities and experiences of civil society
in Southeast Asia. The realities and experiences were examined through
empirical studies of religious, ethnic, gender, and environmental non-
governmental organizations’ (NGO) activities and public participation.
That a number of the contributors to this volume were also NGO
participants provided first-hand understandings of the complex world of
civil society activism.
While the workshop had sought to cover all the countries in Southeast
Asia, no papers on Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar were presented
because of the lack of success in finding researchers in the region
working on those countries. This volume consists of eleven out of the
fourteen papers delivered at the workshop. The editor would like to take
this opportunity to thank all the paperwriters and discussants for their
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viii PREFACE
contributions to the insightful, stimulating discussions during the
workshop. The ISEAS Administration staff must be commended for
their first-rate support that significantly contributed to the smooth
organization of the workshop.
The book would not have been possible without the generous co-
operation of the contributors and I must thank them for their patience in
consenting to the various editorial changes. Needless to say, I am also
grateful to the ISEAS Publications staff for their exceptional assistance in
preparing the manuscript for publication.
Lee Hock Guan
Editor
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About the Contributors
Chantana Banpasirichote is an assistant professor at the Department of
Government, Faculty of Political Sciences, Chulalongkorn University. She
received her Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research
interest is unconventional politics, and as an observer of contemporary
social movements, her current research is related to democracy and
development in Thailand.
John J. Carroll, S.J. was ordained as a priest in 1952 and obtained his
Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University in 1962. Since then he has
taught and done research in the Philippines, and for eight years was on the
Faculty of Social Sciences (six of those years as dean of the Faculty) of the
Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.He was also a visiting professor
at Cornell University, and founding director (and currently chairman) of
the Institute on Church and Social Issues on the campus of the Ateneo de
Manila University.
Russell Hiang-Khng Heng is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies, Singapore, who works on civil society development in
authoritarian societies. He has a Ph.D. degree from the Australian National
University where he wrote his dissertation on the politics of mass media
in Vietnam.
Gillian Koh is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies,
Singapore. She is a co-coordinator of the Institute’s Civil Society Project,
which organized the first national conference on civil society in Singapore
in May 1998. Her research interests focus on public policy in Singapore,
particularly in the areas of state–society relations and administrative
reform and governance. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield.
Lai Suat Yan is a Fulbright Fellow at the Claremont Graduate University
where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies in Religion. Previously,
she was the co-ordinator of the Gender Studies Programme, Universiti
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x ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Malaya. Reflecting her earlier full-time work in a national women’s NGO
and a human rights NGO in Malaysia, she has researched and published
on the issue of violence against women and the women’s movement
in Malaysia.
Lee Hock Guan is a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
Singapore. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis University and
his current research interests are civil society and democratization, and
ethnicity, nationalism, and citizenship in Malaysia.
Patricia Martinez, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Fellow for Religion and
Culture at the Asia–Europe Institute of the Universiti Malaya, and heads
its Intercultural Studies research hub. She employs an interdisciplinary
perspective in her presentations and publications on Islam in Malaysia and
Southeast Asia. She has been awarded a number of fellowships for the
study of Islam, including a Fulbright Fellowship for Islamic Studies
in 2003/04.
Ooi Giok Ling, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of
Policy Studies and also Associate Professor (Adjunct) at the National
University of Singapore. Her research and publications have focused on
the environment, housing, and urban studies, including local governance
issues and ethnicity and health care in Third World development. Among
her publications are Environment and the City (editor) and State–Society
Relations in Singapore (co-editor).
P. Ramasamy is a professor of political economy at the Center for History,
Political Science and Strategic Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
He teaches and researches on Malaysian politics and industrial relations
and lately has been focusing on conflict management in ethnically divided
societies.
Carolyn I. Sobritchea is a professor of Philippine Studies at the Asian
Center and concurrently the Director of the Center for Women’s Studies,
University of the Philippines. She has written several books and articles on
topics like feminist theorizing and methodology,domestic violence, gender
and governance, reproductive rights, and gender and development. She has
served as gender trainer and research consultant of government and non-
government organizations in the Philippines and countries in Asia
and Europe.
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