Eric C. Thompson

Comparative cultural salience: Measures using free-list data

In this article, we discuss procedures for comparing the cultural salience of semantic domains and their constitutive signifiers between groups of respondents based on free list data. These methods allow us to assess the relative similarity and difference of the cognitive salience of elements within a domain across groups of respondents. We argue that cultural salience is an important but often overlooked variable in the structure of semantic domains. Comparing cultural salience provides one grounds for claims of cultural difference (or lack thereof) between different socially defined groups (e.g., national, ethnic, gender, academic). We use data collected on the cultural salience of countries in a project on perceptions of Southeast Asia as an example of the methods described.

Thai wives in Singapore and transnational patriarchy

International marriage migration is a fraught terrain of gender and power relations. Based on research among Thai women married to Singaporean men, we argue that patriarchal outcomes – a distinctive system of transnational patriarchy – result from a complex interaction of women, men and nation-states. We draw on Deniz Kandiyotis insights into patriarchal bargains as a productive framework through which to identify key elements in the making of transnational patriarchal relations. This article provides a detailed account of conditions in Thailand, Singapore and the contact zones in which Thai women and Singaporean men negotiate marriage migration. Relating this case to previous research, particularly among Filipina migrant women, demonstrates points of commonality while also highlighting the importance of attending to difference and diversity among transnational contexts.

Migrant subjectivities and narratives of the Kampung in Malaysia.

Kampung figures prominently in a structure of feeling that contrasts rural and urban in Malaysia. While rural to urban migration and urbanization have proceeded apace in Malaysia, the kampung continues to play an important role in the lives of the countrys Malay community and in Malaysias national cultural geography. This article examines the place of the kampung in that cultural geography as it is related in the narratives of return migrants to the kampung of Sungai Siputeh in northern peninsular Malaysia. The article argues that return migrants are existentially engaged in fashioning their own lives in relationship to this discourse as they move between rural and urban spaces. Moreover, within rural Malaysia, their narratives shape the cultural geography of rural subjects. Anthropologists are abandoning villages in Southeast Asia and around the world. Although village-level fieldwork continues to be the archetype (or at least stereotype) of socio-cultural anthropological investiga

Internet-Mediated Networking and Academic Dependency in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States

Academic networks, sometimes described as ‘invisible colleges’, are known to be important in the production and dissemination of scholarship and knowledge. This article examines the shape of international academic networking via email in the field of Southeast Asian studies. Evidence from a survey of academic Internet users in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the US shows an empirical correspondence to the centre–periphery framework of academic dependency proposed by Syed Farid Alatas and others. At the same time, the results suggest the need for a more fine-grained, institutional-level analysis of these networks. The effects of Internet access and communications also highlight the question of whether this medium promotes broader participation in scholarship or entrenches relationships of academic dependency.

Editorial: mobile communication and Asian modernities

The global emergence of mobile phone and wireless services has renewed the call for new media researchers to understand better the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and society. This is an intellectual challenge comparable to the one posed by the rise of the internet a decade ago. In this themed section of New Media & Society, we propose to take on the challenge and explore the opportunities therein by examining the social, cultural and institutional dynamics of wireless ICTs and the formation of multiple modernities in the context of contemporary Asia. We choose to focus on this part of the world because Asia has long been portrayed as an exotic Other outside western modernity. However, since the post-war industrialization of Japan and the ‘tiger’ economies and the recent economic and technological boom in China, India and several Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, the region has become a major global ICT powerhouse, especially with regard to aspects of mobile communication. In the wake of the Asian Financial crisis of the late 1990s, we have observed a surprising leap in the diffusion of mobile phones throughout Asia, now home to more users than Europe or North America (International Telecommunications Union, 2005). Parallel to rapid technological diffusion is the impressive production capacity of Asia as the world’s leading manufacturer of mobile handsets and accessories.While European and American brands remain prominent in Asian markets, indigenous capacity has been connected to transnational capital and global networks of production and distribution,

Attitudes and Awareness Towards ASEAN: Findings of a Ten-Nation Survey

This report shares results of a region wide survey undertaken in late 2007 among over 2,000 students from leading universities across ASEAN member countries. The survey addressed questions on whether youths today consider themselves to be citizens of ASEAN; whether the regions youth are enthusiastic or skeptical about ASEAN; how well the regions youth know ASEAN and its members; and their concerns for the Association and the region. Survey findings indicate a nascent sense of ownership and stake in ASEAN, despite some clear differences in knowledge and opinions on the grouping. It is interesting to note that the students agreed on the importance of economic cooperation and addressing poverty and development needs; and share a desire to know more about the region.

Immigration, society and modalities of citizenship in Singapore

In this article, I argue that three modalities of citizenship are at play in Singapore: liberal, communal and social. Using a grounded theoretical approach, I highlight the instances in which these modes of conceptualizing citizenship appear in discourse, practice and policy. While past scholarship has highlighted the contrast between liberal and communal modes of citizenship, the social mode has been largely subsumed and obscured within the rubric of communal (or communitarian) democracy and ethno-nationalist citizenship. The article analyzes the interplay among these three modes of citizenship as they played out in the discourse surrounding the 2011 General Election in Singapore. The tension between citizens and noncitizens has become a central political issue in Singapore. Less recognized, but highlighted in my analysis, liberal and communal senses of citizenship are in tension not only with each other but also with a notion of the social based on relationships of mutual benefit and obligation rather than communal, categorical belonging. Drawing on Robert Espositos critique of modern ideas of community and (re)theorization of communitas, I argue that in the case of Singapore and elsewhere, reintroducing a notion of the social (as distinct from the communal) holds potential for discourses, practices and policies that can transcend the divisiveness associated with communalism and the socioeconomic inequalities associated with liberalism.

The politics of learning from a small city: Solo as translocal model and political launch pad

ABSTRACT Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’), mayor of the small Indonesian city of Solo (also officially known as Surakarta) between 2005 and 2012, was subsequently elected as governor of Jakarta and then as president of the Republic of Indonesia. This paper examines aspects of Jokowi’s political journey that speak to urban/regional studies debates on the politics of inter-municipal learning. It shows how the emergence of Solo as a ‘best-practice city’ in translocal learning networks enabled small-city civic boosterism and provided a launch pad for Jokowi’s electability in Jakarta. Implications of translocal learning at the ‘sending’ end are thus shown to extend beyond matters of local political legitimacy.

Thai Perceptions of the ASEAN Region: Southeast Asia as Prathet Phuean Ban

Nearly everywhere, people have learned to think of the world in terms of a nation-state system. The nation, however difficult it may be to pin down analytically, has become a primary category of thought and mode of identity – perhaps the primary mode of political identity for most people around the world (cf. Reynolds, 2002). One effect of nationalism and thinking of the world in terms of “countries” (the colloquial English word for “nationstate”) is to create a world of borders that not only signify the extent and limits of sovereignty, but frame the cultural consciousness and self-awareness of nation-state subjects. History, society and identity are all captured within national frames of reference (cf. Kratoska, 2003). But as a conceptual domain, “countries” also facilitate a transnational imagination of regional and global geographies. Visual and narrative representations – maps, flags, news reports, school lessons and the like – cultivate an orientation toward the world and its people, politics and geography that can be comprehended in terms of nation-state entities (cf. Anderson, 1991; 2004). Knowledge of nation-states as an extensive domain of “countries” is relational. In this sense, countries do not stand alone, but derive their identities in relation and contrast to other countries (i.e. What kind of country is this? How is it to be understood? How should we feel about it?). Association and relationship between countries (in a cognitive, rather than a realpolitik sense) constitutes a field of cultural knowledge. Based on research at Chulalongkorn University, we examine the organisation of that field of knowledge among a cohort of young generation Thais and what it tells us about their perceptions of Southeast Asia and the world. The bulk of writing on the subject of Southeast Asia Asian Studies Review March 2007, Vol. 31, pp. 41–60

Urban Cosmopolitan Chauvinism and the Politics of Rural Identity

Urbanism, as the term is used in this chapter, refers to a cultural milieu found throughout societies, in places both urban and rural. A common sentiment of cultural urbanism is urban cosmopolitan chauvinism—in which cities are felt to be and expressed as sites of diversity, modernity, progress, wealth, and in other ways positively valued. In contrast, the rural as urbanism’s other and rural people are cast as backward, unsophisticated, homogeneous, conservative, poor, and otherwise lacking in various ways. Through such imaginings, cultural urbanism creates subaltern rural identities. This chapter examines how such subaltern rural identities provide discursive grounds for political action and mobilization. It compares four cases—Malaysia, America, China, and Thailand. Each of these has very different cultures of urbanism and diverse political systems. Nevertheless, the politics of rural identity can be seen as playing a role in national politics—even if this role is often not made very explicit in political analysis or political discourse within each country.