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Contemporary Politics and Political Cultures in South East Asia
On May 14th 2003 the Project on the Cold War as Global Conflict at ICAS sponsored
a symposium, “Contemporary Politics and Political Cultures in South East Asia,”
with speakers from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Talks and discussion focused
on the continuing role of Cold War ideologies in shaping political, social and cultural
alternatives in the region; the plasticity and limits of anti-communism for legitimating
repression; the need to distinguish between criticisms of actual historical experiences of
communism and its use to demonize challenges to the status quo. Speakers are listed below
with links to their presentations. ICAS gratefully acknowledges financial support for this
symposium from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Morning Session: Indonesia and Thailand:
Thanet Aphornsuvan was active in the Thai student movement in the early 1970s.
He teaches history as Thammasat University in Bangkok, and was recently a visiting researcher
in Southeast Asian Studies Program at Cornell University. Originally a historian of the
American South with a PhD in history from SUNY Binghamton, he is now researching Thai
intellectual history. He has published many books in Thai, including The Thai Student
Movement and Politics and Thai Society: Collected Essays, and translations of
Marx. In addition he has written numerous essays in English and Thai on slavery in the U.S.
and issues of slavery, freedom, and modernity in contemporary Thai history.
Vedi Renandi Hadiz is a sociology professor at the National University of Singapore.
He is author of Workers and the State in New Order Indonesia, co-editor of two anthologies
on Indonesian politics and economic development and co-author of the forthcoming Reorganising
Power in the Age of Markets: Regime Change and the Ascendance of Oligarchy in Indonesia.
In addition he has written many essays on Southeast Asian and Indonesian politics, society,
and economics. The paper on which his presentation was based will appear in Third World
Quarterly, 25th anniversary edition, vol. 25. no. 1 2004.
Abidin Kusno is a professor art history at SUNY, Binghamton.
His recent work includes Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and
Political Cultures in Indonesia, and “Remembering/Forgetting the May Riots: Architecture, Violence, and the Making of ‘Chinese
Cultures’ in Post-1998 Jakarta” that appeared in Public Culture, 2003, Vol. 15, #1.
Afternoon Session: Philippines:
Patricio Abinales is a professor at the Center for Southeast
Asian Studies, Kyoto University whose work has focused on the Philippine state and the
history of the left in the Philippines. His books include Making Mindanao: Cotabato and
Davao in the Formation of the Philippine Nation-State, Images Of State Power: Essays on
Philippine Politics From the Margins, and Fellow Traveler: Essays on Filipino Communism.
Luis Francia is a poet, essayist and anthologist who writes regularly
for the Sunday Inquirer Magazine in Manila, and the Village Voice in NYC where he teaches
in NYU’s Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program. His books include Memories of
Overdevelopment,a collection of essays and reviews, and the semi-autobiographical Eye of
the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, and Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and
the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999, co-edited with Angel Velasco Shaw. His essay
is reprinted from The Nation, October 27, 2003; it originated as a talk sponsored by the
Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute and was refined following discussion of it at ICAS.
Eric Gamalinda, a poet, novelist, anthologist and journalist,
was born and raised in Manila where he worked as an editor for the Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism. His works of poetry include Lyrics from a Dead Language: poems
1977-1991, Empire of Memory, and, most recently, Zero Gravity for which he won the Asian
American Literary Award. He has written many novels including Confessions of a Volcano,
Planet Waves, and My Sad Republic for which he received the Philippine Centennial Award.
Together with Luis Francia, he edited the collection, Flippin’: Filipinos on America.
He too teaches in NYU’s Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program.
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