The state of East Timor studies after 1999

Taking stock of the state of knowledge on East Timor since the UN intervention of 1999, this article traces the rise of a hegemonic discourse especially around development issues notably as promoted by the World Bank. In turn, the World Bank discourse of lean government, market-oriented economic policies, and export-oriented agriculture is reflected in a number of publications. As a formidable patronage machine in East Timor, it would not be surprising if arriving international staff along with East Timorese returnees would emerge as Bank collaborators or even employees. The thriving NGO community which emerged in East Timor as the underbelly of the UN mission also found common cause with human rights discourse and, especially, sustainable development discourse from within the UN mission. Meanwhile, a number of foreign anthropologists embedded themselves within and without the UN mission producing a major corpus of writings. Amidst this “clash of paradigms” East Timor muddled along, dependent on donor support, but prey to vagaries of seasons, international markets, and predatory outsiders. To a large extent, the international agency, NGO, and academic literature tracked these vagaries but, outside of linguistic studies, we await a critical mass of autonomous writings by East Timorese about East Timor.     

Remembering the Southeast Asian Chinese massacres of 1941-45

This article examines a series of wartime massacres (sook chings) conducted at various Southeast Asian sites with a view to teasing out broader lessons about justice, compensation, apology and the uses of memory both on the side of the victims as well as the nation that perpetrated the crimes. Characteristically, the sook chings of Southeast Asia, occurring in ethnically complex societies with mostly Chinese as victims, displayed a planned character of strictly ethnic and political “cleansing” that meets broad definitions of genocide. This article also considers historical memory. Obviously, as with Japanese war crimes in China, the sook chings of Southeast Asia are remembered locally. But also, as in China, remembrance of the sook chings has been modulated by the state, mostly in the interest of good relations and business links with Japan (with some notable exceptions). But, alongside the Nanjing Massacre, much contested in Japanese historiography, the sook ching massacres remain virtually unknown to the Japanese public, and have not become an issue between Japan and the Southeast Asian countries where these events occurred.     

Minority manipulation in colonial Indochina: Lessons and legacies

Abstract

As one student of the ethnohistory of the highlands of Indochina, Hickey, has written, the French “penetration” of Kontum, Ban Me Thuot, and Dalat had achieved a certain success by the beginning of the First World War. Central to the viability of the French colonial project of economic exploitation in the highlands was the need for road construction and other public works, including labor for privately owned French plantations. Not only did the subject peoples of the remote villages of the interior—broadly designated Montagnards in this essay—find themselves obliged to pay taxes, but they were also expected by the French to provide corvée labor or labor dues (prestation). Colonialism indubitably demands the services of local collaborators, and such was the case in the highlands where local chiefs were vested with new authority by the French administration. Even though by the 1930s the French “pacification” of the interior had reduced armed opposition to the nuisance level, pacification's twin imperative of administrative penetration of the conquered zones and peoples posed equally serious ethical questions.     

Stampede to judgement: persuasive influence and herding behavior by courts

We model appeals courts as Bayesian decision makers with privateinformation about a supreme court's interpretation of the law;each court also observes the previous decisions of other appealscourts in similar cases. Such 'persuasive influence' can cause'herding' behavior by later appeals courts as decisions progressivelyrely more on previous decisions and less on a court's privateinformation. We provide an example drawn from a recent UnitedStates Supreme Court decision finding unconstitutional a basicprovision of a law previously found constitutional by six circuitcourts. Herding on the wrong decision may remain uncorrected,since review of harmonious decisions is rare.     

Malaysia's Foreign Policy: The First Fifty Years: Alignment,Neutralism, Islamism

Abstract

What is the role of new media in driving political change in China? How do we understand the interaction of rapid increases in connectivity, regime censorship and democratic outcomes? This article seeks to assess the democratic implications of new media in China through the lens of three key and nested criteria derived from general theories of deliberative democracy: information access, rational-critical deliberation and mechanisms of vertical accountability. The key finding is that connectivity expands political opportunity. How this opportunity is exploited is up to users, who often vary widely in their political preferences, values, and norms of behaviour. The results are multiple mechanisms of change taking place simultaneously and the development of a more interactive and pluralistic public sphere. While China obviously still has to develop far more formalised and institutionalised mechanisms for managing state-society relations, political pluralism in the form of online deliberation might be considered a foundational condition for a more interactive and liberalised political order rooted in greater public deliberation and societal feedback. Moderate forms of discourse and societal feedback are tenuous and increasingly exist in a chaotic and diversified online discourse defined equally as much by new methods of authoritarian propaganda and virulent nationalist ideas.