Tony Day

Indonesia, a huge secular, archipelagic nation-state in Southeast Asia, is one of the world's newest democracies. Yet little is known to outsiders about this complex and fascinating country, the home of the world's largest Muslim community and the scene of recent natural disasters and violent communal struggles. Eleven scholars provide incisive critical appraisals of the leading issues and controversies facing Indonesians as they seek to build a democratic nation that is tolerant of multicultural diversity and free from imperial domination.

Indonesia after Suharto

Identifying with Freedom

Keith Foulcher

Papers delivered at a workshop on 'Postcoloniality and the Question of Modern Indonesian Literature' in May 1998 at University of Sydney.

Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature

Clearing a Space

Maya H. T. Liem

The Cold War in Southeast Asia was a many-faceted conflict, driven by regional historical imperatives as much as by the contest between global superpowers. The essays in this book offer the most detailed and probing examination to date of the cultural dimension of the Cold War in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian culture from the late 1940s to the late 1970s was primarily shaped by a long-standing search for national identity and independence, which took place in the context of intense rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the Peoples' Republic of China emerging in 1949 as another major international competitor for influence in Southeast Asia. Based on fieldwork in Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, the essays in this collection analyze the ways in which art, literature, film, theater, spectacle, physical culture, and the popular press represented Southeast Asian responses to the Cold War and commemorated that era's violent conflicts long after tensions had subsided. Southeast Asian cultural reactions to the Cold War involved various solutions to the dilemmas of the newly independent nation-states of the region. What is common to all of the perspectives and works examined in this book is that they expressed social and aesthetic concerns that both antedated and outlasted the Cold War, ones that never became simply aligned with the ideologies of either bloc. Contributors:Francisco B. Benitez, University of Washington; Bo Bo, Burmese writer (SOAS, University of London); Michael Bodden, University of Victoria; Simon Creak, Australian National University; Gaik Cheng Khoo, Australian National University; Rachel Harrison, SOAS, University of London; Barbara Hatley, University of Tasmania; Boitran Huynh-Beattie, Asiarta Foundation; Jennifer Lindsay, Australian National University

The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia

Cultures at War

kritik postkolonial

Sastra Indonesia modern

Indonesia is one of the world's newest democracies. Yet little is known to outsiders about this country, the home of the world's largest Muslim community. This book provides appraisals of the leading issues facing Indonesians as they seek to build a democratic nation that is tolerant of multicultural diversity and free from imperial domination.

Indonesia After Suharto

Fluid Iron is the first extended treatment of state formation in Southeast Asia from early to contemporary times and the first book-length analysis of Western historical and ethnographic writing on the region. It includes critical assessments of the work of Clifford Geertz, O.W. Wolters, Benedict Anderson, and other major scholars who have written on early, colonial, and modern Southeast Asian history and culture. Making use of the ideas of Weber, Marx, Foucault, and postmodern and postcolonial theory, Tony Day argues that culture must be restored to the study of Southeast Asian history so that the state and historical developments in the region can be returned to their own "alternative" historical contexts and trajectories. He employs a wide range of contemporary scholarship, as well as Southeast Asian literary and historical texts, inscriptions, and temples to explore the kinds of concepts and practices--kinship networks, cosmologies, gender identities, bureaucracies, rituals, violence and aesthetics--that have been used for centuries to build states.Highly readable and accessibly written, Fluid Iron demonstrates that Southeast Asian state building has taken place in a part of the world that has always been a crossroads of cultural and transcultural change. Day urges Southeast Asians to learn more about the history of their own state formations so they can safeguard not only human freedom, but also the "incongruity" of their unique region in the years ahead.

State Formation in Southeast Asia

Fluid Iron

Maya Hian Ting Liem

"These innovative essays compel us to reevaluate our understanding of the Cold War as a predominantly political and military event. Their consideration of a broad range of cultural forms---from literature and film to glossy magazines and body-building---reminds us that the Cold War's influence on culture and its producers was as varied and complex as the Southeast Asian countries it touched. Lively and insightful, this rich collection is a valuable contribution to both Cold War studies and the modern histories of Southeast Asia."---Richard A. Ruth, Ph.D., Department of History, U.S. Naval Academy; and author of In Buddha's Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War Cultures at War examines how the cultures of postcolonial Southeast Asia responded to the Cold War. Based on fieldwork throughout the diverse region, these essays analyze the ways in which art, literature, theater, film, physical fitness programs, and the popular press reflected complex Southeast Asian reactions to the ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, and, to a degree, China. Determined to remain "nonaligned," artists synthesized traditional and modern, local and international sources to produce a vibrant constellation of work. For each of the national cultures discussed here, any Cold War tendency toward anxiety and conformity was challenged by creative pluralism and individual expression

Tony Day

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