Michael G. Peletz

Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia

Contributors: Evelyn Blackwood Suzanne A. Brenner Janadas Devan Geraldine Heng Jennifer Krier Jane A. Margold Mary Beth Mills Aihwa Ong Michael G. Peletz Jacqueline Siapno

Transgenderism and Gender Pluralism in Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times

This article develops the concept of gender pluralism to analyze historical and ethnographic material bearing on Southeast Asia since early modern times. Deployment of this concept in the context of an analysis that approaches transgenderism as an optic through which to view such pluralism entails an intervention against the grain of much writing on gender and sexuality. This intervention involves an interpretive framework conducive to the comparative historical investigation of culturally interlocked domains that are often separated or ignored in scholarly accounts, as occurs when gender is construed as a code word for women and is thus stripped of much of its significance before research has begun or when transgender practices or certain modalities of sexuality are examined in relative isolation from other salient components of the more encompassing sex/gender and culturalpolitical systems of which they are a part. It is argued that for this region and period transgenderism provides a valuable window on gender pluralism partly because the vicissitudes of transgendering are broadly indexical of the greater formalization and segregation of gender roles, the distancing of women from sources of power and prestige, the attenuated range of legitimacy concerning things erotic and sexual, and the constriction of pluralistic gender sensibilities as a whole.

A share of the harvest : kinship, property, and social history among the Malays of Rembau

The inhabitants of the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan have long been of interest to outside observers. They are Muslims yet they have matrilineal clans, and both houses and land tend to be owned and inherited by women. In the face of British rule, modern market forces, and Islamic nationalism, the Malays of the Rembau district of Negeri Sembilan have succeeded in retaining many features of their matrilineality. Michael Peletz examines persistence and change in the social organization of these Malays in the period 1830 to 1980.

Sacred texts and dangerous words: the politics of law and cultural rationalization in Malaysia

This essay concerns the politics of law and culture in Malaysia. It examines how processes of cultural change are shaped by state laws and policies and the ways in which local communities are incorporated into more encompassing political entities and their attendant moral orders. I am particularly interested in “rationalization,” a concept of central importance in much of Max Webers work on comparative history and politics and the sociology of religion. Weber, who used this concept in a variety of ambiguous, multidimensional, and contextually specific ways, further confounded students by his difficult language and style. It is widely agreed, however, that he employed the term to refer both to institutional changes involving differentiation, specialization, and the development of hierarchical, bureaucratic forms of social organization; and to intellectual or attitudinal trends entailing, in negative terms, “the disenchantment of the world” (the displacement of “magical elements of thought”), and, in positive terms, processes by which “ideas gain in systematic coherence and naturalistic consistency” (Gerth and Mills 1958:51; Wrong 1970:26; Turner 1974:151– Schluchter 1979:14–15; Alexander 1989:74).

Matriliny and modernity : sexual politics and social change in rural Malaysia

Tables and mapsAcknowledgmentsSelect glossaryIntroduction: A modern Malyasian matriliny1 People and places2 Past and present I: Gender and the remaking of adat perpatih3 Past and present II: Gender and the remaking of Rembau peasant economy4 Gender and a marginal village economy I: Women of property5 Gender and a marginal village economy II: Local production and income6 Gender, work and inequality in Rembau7 Rembau femininities8 Modernising kinship and family in contemporary RembauConclusion: Female autonomy in Rembau?NotesBibliographyIndex

Moral and Political Economies in Rural Southeast Asia A Review Article

Over the course of the past few decades, analyses and comparisons of agrarian politics and insurrections have been of central concern within political science, sociology, and related disciplines. Especially in the last ten years, these concerns have been informed and recast in light of theoretical advances and paradigmatic shifts within various academic fields, and as a consequence of tumultuous, realpolitik developments impinging upon or otherwise involving large numbers of peasants. In the case of Southeast Asia, for instance, the most recent decade has witnessed the emergence of substantive challenges to long established models and epistemological assumptions underlying our basic understandings of agrarian rebellion as well as our very discourse on the logic of peasant political strategies and seemingly communalistic traditions. Certain of these challenges range well beyond explicitly political matters and speak to a much broader set of issues. On the one hand, such issues pertain to the characteristic features of peasant economics and exchange, the nature of structural ties linking rural sectors with the world market, and the overall nexus of peasant welfare levels, ideologies, and adaptations in the context of colonial and postcolonial states. On the other hand, and yet clearly related to the foregoing, the questions posed by recent critics of received knowledge bear upon motivation and decision making, particularly in light of cultural perceptions of legitimacy and attitudes toward the taking and sharing of risk. Indeed, what we seem to have is essentially a clarion call for a complete reassessment of peasant responses both to upward shifts in demographic pressure and relative resource scarcity, and more generally, to the large-scale transformation of agrarian relations that is commonly associated with the

Malaysia's Syariah Judiciary as Global Assemblage:Islamization,Corporatization, and Other Transformations in Context

This essay concerns transformations in the judicial apparatus involved in implementing Islamic law ( syariah / shari ‘ a ) in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation in Southeast Asia. Three of my goals are to delineate some of the empirical complexities of the syariah judiciarys day-to-day operations and the mutually contradictory directions in which it is moving; to problematize the widely invoked trope of Islamization as a gloss for these phenomena; and to illustrate that this judiciary is profitably viewed as a global assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Ong and Collier 2005). Another, more general, objective is to elucidate some of the ways that religion, law, and attendant phenomena are being bureaucratized, rationalized, corporatized, and otherwise transformed in an increasingly globalized world.

From British to bumiputera rule : local politics and rural development in Peninsular Malaysia

Based on two years of intensive fieldwork, this detailed community study breaks new ground. Combining anthropological and historical disciplines, it deals with village politics amongst rural Malays growing oilpalm and rubber. This study traces the continuing influence of the colonial and post-colonial state policies on contemporary rural development. It shows that village political cleavages are not just the result of modern electoral practices introduced after World War II but are responses to politico-economic events at the national and even international levels. It examines not only inter-party rivalry between the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) but also the intra-party politics of both organizations at the local level.

Gender, Sexuality, and the State in Southeast Asia

My comments in this essay focus on recent scholarship on gender, sexuality, and the state in Southeast Asia and include brief remarks on some of the literature regarding Southeast Asians in the diaspora. In the interests of transparency, I begin by noting that I am an anthropologist by trade and that many of my observations pertain to writings by anthropologists and historians, though I also engage work in other disciplines.

Andrew Beatty, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java.

In this feature we highlight a recently launched book. We invite specialists in the field to comment on the book, and we invite the author to respond to their comments.In this issue we focus on Andrew Beattys, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java. Those invited to comment on the book are Puja Semedi, Michael Peletz and Edwin Wieiringa. Registered readers may participate in the debate.