Session 207: Reform and Resistance in State/Society Relations in South East Asia

Organizer: Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales
Chair: Laura J. Summers, University of Hull
Discussants: Vincent K. Pollard, University of Hawaii, Manoa; Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales

The study of state systems has been challenged in recent years by scholarly focus on 'non-state' political processes. Although scholars are now more aware that the state cannot be regarded as the natural focus of political and historical analysis, states remain a most complex and expansive form of human organization.
This panel seeks to explore relationships between, on the one hand, power systems and ideologies promoted by state elites and, on the other, the concerns and priorities of the people over whom states claim authority. It will focus on points of intersection and resistance, exploring the complex processes by which political cultures and systems of power are continually contested by dissent and opposition, giving rise to altered conceptions of authority and community. A particular focus will be the extent to which popular concerns both constrain the development of state-sponsored ideologies and engender their transformation.
The panel will bring together scholars from history, political science, and anthropology, presenting diverse case studies such as the importance of semangat in nineteenth-century Sarawak and contests over ideology and state power in contemporary Vietnam. Participants will draw on a number of methodological approaches in their analyses.
The panel aims in this way to contribute to the understanding of political community and legitimacy in Southeast Asia.

Public Spaces/Public Disgraces?: Crowds and the State in Vietnam
Mandy Thomas, University of Western Sydney
This paper argues that a semantic shift in the crowd in Vietnam over the last decade has allowed public space to become a site through which transgressive ideologies and desires may have an outlet. At a time of accelerating social change, the state has effectively delimited public criticism yet a fragile but assertive form of Vietnamese democratic practice has arisen in public space, at the margins of official society, in sites previously equated with state control. Official state functions attract only small audiences, and rather than celebrating the dominance of the party, reveal the disengagement of the populace in the party's activities. Where crowds were always a component of state(stage)-managed events, now public spaces are attracting large numbers of people for supposedly non-political activities which may become transgressive acts condemned by the regime. In support of the notion that crowding is an opening up of the possibility of more subversive political actions, the paper presents an analysis of recent crowd formation and the state's reaction to them. These events include religious festivals, street celebrations after football matches, public gatherings outside law courts, and the massing of the public at the funeral of a popular young actor. The analysis reveals the modalities through which popular culture has provided the public with the means to transcend the constraints of official, authorized, and legitimate codes of behaviour in public space. Changes in the use of public space, it is argued, map the sets of relations between the public and the state, making these transforming relationships visible, although fraught with contradictions and anomalies.

Следует отметить, что исследования проводятся не только в университетских рамках, но и при организации музейных выставок по истории, антропологии, этнографии, социальным вопросам, архитектуре, искусству.

Примеры.

Архитектурная выставка в Париже, музей архитектуры в начале 21 века и соответствующие публикации.

Большая антропологическая выставка в Нью Йорке, 2003-2004 год.

Выставка ткачества в музее этнографии в Ханое, 2005.

Выставки изобразительного искусства ( часто сопровождаются конференциями или лекциями)- Париж-Ханой- Сайгон. Мои выступления и лекции в Макао, Беркли, ЛА , Монреале и т.д.

Зарубежные исследователи, занимающиеся теми или иными вопросами вьетнамологии, часто выступают на конференциях или семинарах, проводимых в Ханое и организуемых иностранными организациями просветительского толка: Альянс Франсэз или Институтом Гете ( конференция по урбанизму). Эти организации зачастую финансируют независимых исследователей и их публикации – перевод вьетнамской монашеской поэзии, моя книга.