Are political parties the weak link in Indonesia's young democracy? More pointedly, do they form a giant cartel to suck patronage resources from the state? Indonesian commentators almost invariably brand the country's parties as corrupt, self-absorbed, and elitist, while most scholars argue that they are poorly institutionalised. This book tests ......
Islam is at home in many of the areas of the eastern Indonesia, with the early 15th century Masjid Tua Wapauwe in Northern Maluku arguably the oldest mosque in Indonesia. The studies collected in this volume present a rich introduction to the myriad ways of being Muslim across this diverse archipelago, from Sulawest to Maluku and Nusa Tenggara ......
Language and Politics in the Toraja Highlands of Indonesia
The expression "one or two words" is used by the Toraja highlanders of Indonesia to refer euphemistically to their highly elaborate form of political speechmaking. Moving from this understatement, which denotes the meaningfulness of transient acts of speech, One or Two Words offers an analysis of the shifting power relations between centers and ......
Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World
This stimulating new reading of constructions of ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore is an important contribution to understanding the powerful linkages between ethnicity, identity and nationalism in multi-ethnic Southeast Asia. The narrative of Malay identity devised by Malay nationalists, writers and filmmakers in the late colonial period ......
Why have some Southeast Asian cities become laboratories of reform while others remain mired in old patterns of patronage politics and substandard services? This has become an important question now that over half of Southeast Asia's population lives in urban areas, transforming the politics of the region. Quintessentially urban problems-traffic ......
Print Passages researches the history of the coming of the printed book in Indonesia and the consequences this new technology brought with it. Never before has the book culture in Indonesia been studied this thoroughly. Although printed material has become intertwined with everyday life in the 21st century, book culture has not always been as ......
Sea nomads have been part of the economic and political landscape of Southeast Asia for millennia. They have played many roles over the longue-durEe: in certain periods proving central to the ability of land-based polities to generate wealth, by sourcing valuable maritime commodities, facilitating trade, forming a naval force to secure and protect ......
Over the past thirty years, contemporary art in Vietnam has emerged as a dynamic field shaped by memory, history, and experiment. Many Vietnamese artists now command international recognition, even as a growing domestic market for contemporary art fosters alternative infrastructures of collection and exhibition. Signs and Signals from Vietnam: ......
Interlocutor Reference and Self-Other Relations across Southeast Asian Speech Communities
A study of interlocutor reference that significantly deepens our understanding of the ways in which self-other relations are linguistically mediated in social interaction, based on the analysis of Southeast Asian languages. Terms used by speakers to refer to themselves and their interlocutors form one of the ways that language expresses, ......
