Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T02:05:20.113Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Fate of Nationalism in the New States: Southeast Asia in Comparative Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2012

John T. Sidel
John T. Sidel*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics
*
j.t.sidel@lse.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In two landmark essays published in 1973, the eminent anthropologist Clifford Geertz offered an early assessment of what he termed “The Fate of Nationalism in the New States,” referring to the newly independent nation-states of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ranging with characteristic ease and flair across Burma, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Nigeria, Geertz argued that an “Integrative Revolution” was under way, but one complicated and compromised by the inherent tension between “essentialism” and “epochalism,” between “Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States.” Geertz argued:

The peoples of the new states are simultaneously animated by two powerful, thoroughly interdependent, yet distinct and often actually opposed motives—the desire to be recognized as responsible agents whose wishes, acts, hopes, and opinions “matter,” and the desire to build an efficient, dynamic modern state. The one aim is to be noticed: it is a search for identity, and a demand that the identity be publicly acknowledged as having import, a social assertion of the self as “being somebody in the world.” The other aim is practical: it is a demand for progress, for a rising standard of living, more effective political order, greater social justice, and beyond that of “playing a part in the larger arena of world politics,” of “exercising influence among the nations.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 114 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Geertz, Clifford, “After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States,” and “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” both in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 234–54Google Scholar, 255–310.

2 Geertz, “Integrative Revolution,” 258.

3 Ibid.

4 Geertz, “After the Revolution,” 237–38.

5 Geertz, “Integrative Revolution,” 278.

6 See, for example, Reid, Anthony, Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

7 Ong, Aihwa, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Duncan, Christopher R., ed., Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

8 Bertrand, Jacques, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Bertrand, Jacques and Laliberté, André, eds., Multination States in Asia: Accommodation or Resistance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

9 Geertz, “Integrative Revolution,” 278.

10 Smith, Anthony D., The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar.

11 Winichakul, Thongchai, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of the Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 3.

12 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983)Google Scholar.

13 Lieberman, Victor, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830: Volume 1: Integration on the Mainland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See: Edwards, Penny, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Goscha, Christopher E., “Annam and Vietnam in the New Indochinese Space, 1887–1945,” in Antlöv, Hans and Tønnesson, Stein, eds., Asian Forms of the Nation (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 1996), 93–130Google Scholar; Ivarsson, Søren, Creating Laos: The Making of a Lao Space between Indochina and Siam, 1860–1945 (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2008)Google Scholar; Taylor, Robert H., The State in Burma (London: C. Hurst, 1987)Google Scholar.

15 See Winichakul, Siam Mapped; Streckfuss, David, “The Mixed Colonial Legacy in Siam: Origins of Thai Racialist Thought, 1890–1910,” in Sears, Laurie J., ed., Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: Essays in Honor of John R. W. Smail (Madison: University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), 123–53Google Scholar; and the various fine essays in Harrison, Rachel V. and Jackson, Peter A., eds., The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Brubaker, Rogers and Cooper, Frederick, “Beyond ‘Identity,’” Theory and Society 29, 1 (Feb. 2000): 1–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Roy, Srirupa, Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 15.

18 Ibid., 1–31.

19 Thompson, W. Scott, Unequal Partners: Philippine and Thai Relations with the United States, 1965–1975 (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975)Google Scholar; Shalom, Stephen R., The United States and the Philippines: A Study of Neo-Colonialism (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1981)Google Scholar; and Fineman, Daniel, A Special Relationship: The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958 (Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

20 Skinner, G. William, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Wickberg, Edgar, The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850–1898 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Golay, Frank H., ed., Underdevelopment and Economic Nationalism in Southeast Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

21 Diller, Anthony, “What Makes Central Thai a National Language?” in Reynolds, Craig, ed., National Identity and Its Defenders: Thailand, 1939–1989 (Clayton, Victoria: Monash Papers on Southeast Asia, 1991), 87–132Google Scholar; Winichakul, Siam Mapped, 128–74.

22 Anderson, Benedict, “Studies of the Thai State: The State of Thai Studies,” in Ayal, Eliezer B., ed., The Study of Thailand: Analyses of Knowledge, Approaches, and Prospects in Anthropology, Art History, Economics, History, and Political Science (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1978), 193–233Google Scholar.

23 Handley, Paul M., The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 139–79Google Scholar; Chaloemtiarana, Thak, The Politics of Despotic Paternalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2007)Google Scholar.

24 Tejapira, Kasian, “Toppling Thaksin,” New Left Review 39 (May/June 2006): 17–18Google Scholar.

25 Anderson, Ben, “Withdrawal Symptoms: Social and Cultural Aspects of the October 6 Coup,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 9, 3 (July–Sept. 1977), 13–30Google Scholar.

26 Bowie, Katherine, Rituals of National Loyalty: An Anthropology of the State and the Village Scout Movement in Thailand (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

27 Handley, The King Never Smiles, 260.

28 McCargo, Duncan, “Network Monarchy and Legitimacy Crises in Thailand,” Pacific Review 18, 4 (Dec. 2005), 499–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 McCargo, Duncan and Pathmanand, Ukrist, The Thaksinization of Thailand (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2004)Google Scholar; Phongpaichit, Pasuk and Baker, Chris, Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2004)Google Scholar.

30 Winichakul, Thongchai, “Toppling Democracy,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 38, 1 (Feb. 2008): 11–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 See: Connors, Michael K., “Article of Faith: The Failure of Royal Liberalism in Thailand,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 38, 1 (Feb. 2008): 143–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Lacaba, José F., Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage: The First Quarter Storm and Related Events (Manila: Asphodel Books, 1986)Google Scholar.

33 Jones, Gregg R., Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine Guerrilla Movement (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Pimentel, Benjamin Jr., Edjop: The Unusual Journey of Edgar Jopson (Quezon City: KEN, 1989)Google Scholar.

34 Dios, Aurora Javate-de, Dary, Petronilo Bn., and Kalaw-Tirol, Lorna, eds., Dictatorship and Revolution: Roots of People Power (Manila: Conspectus, 1988)Google Scholar.

35 Hedman, Eva-Lotta E., “The Spectre of Populism in Philippine Politics and Society: Artista, Masa, Eraption!” South East Asia Research 9, 1 (Mar. 2001): 5–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Anderson, Benedict, Long-Distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics (Amsterdam: Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam, 1992)Google Scholar.

37 See, for example, Constable, Nicole, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

38 Rafael, Vicente, “Your Grief Is Our Gossip: Overseas Filipinos and other Spectral Presences,” Public Culture 9, 2 (Winter 1997): 267–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Furnivall, John S., Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948)Google Scholar.

40 Yi, Daw Khin, The Dobama Movement in Burma (1930–1938) (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1988)Google Scholar; Kahin, George McT., Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2003)Google Scholar.

41 Dorothy Hess Guyot, “The Political Impact of the Japanese Occupation of Burma” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1966); Anderson, Benedict, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944–1946 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

42 Taylor, Robert H., The State in Burma (London: C. Hurst, 1987), 217–90Google Scholar; Anderson, Benedict, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 99–109Google Scholar.

43 Lintner, Bertil, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Smith, Martin T., Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity (London: Zed Books, 1999)Google Scholar; Harvey, Barbara S., Permesta: Half a Rebellion (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1977)Google Scholar; Dijk, Cornelis van, Rebellion under the Banner of Islam: The Darul Islam in Indonesia (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Taylor, Robert H., Foreign and Domestic Consequences of the KMT Intervention in Burma (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1973)Google Scholar; Kahin, Audrey R. and Kahin, George McT., Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New York: New Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

45 Adas, Michael, The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1825–1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

46 Chakravarti, Nalini Ranjan, The Indian Minority in Burma: The Rise and Decline of an Immigrant Community (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations, 1971)Google Scholar.

47 Taylor, Robert H., “Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma,” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 10, 1 (1982): 7–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Selth, Andrew, “Race and Resistance in Burma, 1942–1945,” Modern Asian Studies 20, 3 (1986): 483–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Gravers, Mikael, “The Karen Making of a Nation,” in Tønnesson, Stein and Antlöv, Hans, eds., Asian Forms of the Nation (Richmond: Curzon, 1996), 237–69Google Scholar; South, Ashley, Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Sheldrake (London: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar.

50 Silverstein, Josef, Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of Stagnation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

51 South, Ashley, Ethnic Politics in Burma: States of Conflict (London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.

52 Winters, Jeffrey A., Power in Motion: Capital Mobility and the Indonesian State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

53 Roosa, John, Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto's Coup d'état in Indonesia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Simpson, Bradley R., Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

54 Anderson, Language and Power, 123–51; and Imagined Communities, 120–22.

55 Robison, Richard, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1986)Google Scholar; Daniel Dhakidae, “The State, the Rise of Capital, and the Fall of Political Journalism: Political Economy of Indonesian News Industry” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1991); Michael S. Malley, “Resource Distribution, State Coherence, and Political Centralization in Indonesia, 1950–1997” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1999).

56 Saltford, John, The United Nations and the Indonesian Takeover of West Papua, 1962–1969: The Anatomy of a Betrayal (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002)Google Scholar.

57 Anderson, Benedict, ed., Violence and the State in Suharto's Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2001)Google Scholar.

58 Anderson, Benedict, “Bung Karno and the Fossilization of Soekarno's Thought,” Indonesia 74 (Oct. 2002): 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Tan, Mély G., “The Social and Cultural Dimensions of the Role of the Ethnic Chinese in Indonesian Society,” Indonesia 51 (Apr. 1991): 113–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Oetomo, Dédé, “The Chinese of Indonesia and the Development of the Indonesian Language,” Indonesia 51 (Apr. 1991): 53–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shin, Yoon Hwan, “The Role of Elites in Creating Capitalist Hegemony in Post-Oil Boom Indonesia,” Indonesia 51 (Apr. 1991): 127–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Pemberton, John, On the Subject of “Java” (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

62 Hefner, Robert W., “Islam, State, and Civil Society: ICMI and the Struggle for the Indonesian Middle Class,” Indonesia 56 (Oct. 1993): 1–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Sidel, John T., “Macet Total: Logics of Circulation and Accumulation in the Demise of Indonesia's New Order,” Indonesia 66 (Oct. 1998): 159–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Bertrand, Jacques, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

65 Sidel, John T., Indonesia: Migrants, Migrant Workers, Refugees, and the New Citizenship Law (Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2007)Google Scholar; and Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

66 Anderson, Benedict, “Gravel in Jakarta's Shoes,” in The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World (London: Verso, 1998), 131–38Google Scholar.

67 Aspinall, Edward, The Helsinki Agreement: A More Promising Basis for Peace in Aceh? (Washington, D.C.: East-West Center Washington, 2005)Google Scholar; Kivimäki, Timo, Initiating a Peace Process in Papua: Actors, Issues, Process, and the Role of the International Community (Washington, D.C.: East-West Center Washington, 2006)Google Scholar.

68 Goscha, Christopher E., Vietnam or Indochina? Contesting Concepts of Space in Vietnamese Nationalism, 1887–1954 (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 1995), 13–95Google Scholar.

69 Ibid., 96–146.

70 Goscha, Chistopher E., “Vietnam and the World Outside: The Case of Vietnamese Advisers in Laos (1948–62),” South East Asia Research 12, 2 (July 2004): 141–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heder, Steve, Cambodian Communism and the Vietnamese Model, Volume 1: Imitation and Independence, 1930–1975 (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

71 Castle, Timothy, At War in the Shadow of Vietnam: U.S. Military Aid to the Royal Lao Government, 1955–1975 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

72 Goscha, Christopher E. and Engelbert, Thomas, Falling Out of Touch: Vietnamese Communist Policy towards an Emerging Cambodian Communist Movement (1930–1975) (Clayton, Victoria: Monash Asia Institute, 1995)Google Scholar.

73 Taylor, Philip, Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in Vietnam's South (Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Pelley, Patricia M., Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Evans, Grant, Lao Peasants under Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Pholsena, Vatthana, Post-War Laos: The Politics of Culture, History, and Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Barnett, Anthony, “Cambodia Will Never Disappear,” New Left Review 180 (Mar./Apr. 1990): 101–25Google Scholar.

76 Chandler, David P., The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution Since 1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

77 Gottesman, Evan R., Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

78 Roff, William R., The Origins of Malay Nationalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

79 Trocki, Carl A., Opium and Empire: Chinese Society in Colonial Singapore, 1800–1910 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

80 Hirschman, Charles, “The Meaning and Measurement of Ethnicity in Malaysia: An Analysis of Census Classifications,” Journal of Asian Studies 46, 3 (Aug. 1987): 555–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Harper, Timothy N., The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Jones, Matthew, Conflict and Confrontation in South East Asia, 1961–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

83 Freedman, Maurice, “The Growth of a Plural Society in Malaya,” Pacific Affairs 33, 2 (1960): 158–68Google Scholar; Hirschman, Charles, “The Making of Race in Colonial Malaya: Political Economy and Racial Ideology,” Sociological Forum 1, 2 (1986): 330–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 Gordon P. Means, “‘Special Rights’ as a Strategy for Development,” Comparative Politics (Oct. 1972): 29–61.

85 Jesudason, James V., Ethnicity and the Economy: The State, Chinese, Business, and Multinationals in Malaysia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Gomez, Edmund Terence and Jomo, K. S., Malaysia's Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Profits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

86 See the various fine essays by Wah, Francis Loh Kok, Hai, Lim Hong, and Aeria, Andrew, in: “Sabah and Sarawak: The Politics of Development and Federalism,” Kajian Malaysia 15, 1 & 2 (special issue, 1997)Google Scholar.

87 See, for example, the highly illuminating and instructive account of Greek and Italian nationalism in Herzfeld, Michael, “Localism and the Logic of Nationalistic Folklore: Cretan Reflections,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, 2 (Apr. 2003): 281–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar.