Concluding comments about the Southeast Asia course

The comments below were addressed to the organiser of the course.

---***---***---

To end this learning diary, a few comments on the course.

My initial motivation in following the course was to learn more about SEA and to work in a slightly more structured manner. However, while following the lectures and doing the learning diary exercise my motivation changed somewhat in that seeing things from a student’s perspective I learnt a lot about this kind of virtual learning platform based course that might be useful in my work as a teacher.

Firstly, the issue of why I did the learning diary exercise (and became annoyed that I will be unable to write the essay paper). My decision to write the diary was based on my view of study; I feel it is the responsibility of students to contribute courses and not just take notes from a lecturer and then leave. All students, regardless of how inexperienced they might be in the field, can contribute to discussion, can help their fellow students’ learning, and can provide the teacher with insights.

Next a few comments on the form of the course and some ideas that might help in its development.

Tasks
The fact that the course is done without much contact with the teacher means there is little opportunity for negotiation of the tasks to be done. Consequently, the instructions need to be more detailed than in a classroom situation. I was, and to a certain extent still am, unsure of what precisely a learning diary is. Future students could be helped by having access to teacher-annotated examples, perhaps taken from this year’s course, to see what a learning diary should look like.

Format of tasks
To help students I would suggest that it be made explicit that the parts of the learning diary should be one file only and not one file per lecture. My experience is that it also helps if students are given a clear format for how they should name their files. Something like; “contempsea_Part_1_(Family Name)” so if a student is called Timo Virtanen, he would name the first part of his learning diary “contempsea_Part_1_Virtanen”. The question of whether students are allowed to use fields (header/footer) in the file should be made clear. These are small matters but help reduce student angst.

Timing
Doing the course as a student made me realise how important timing of tasks is. The small technical problems with the server meant that I fell behind the work and was left with a feeling of always trying to catch up. This may be because I am not a full-time student and have lots of other commitments, but I suspect others might have encountered similar feelings. Another thing I noticed is the need for time to think before writing the learning diary entry, especially since I did not want to merely repeat what the lecturer had said.

Lectures
It was evident from the lectures that the lecturers were knowledgeable in their field. My criticism would be that the lectures were sometimes too PowerPoint based. This meant that the lecture became too information-dense for spoken discourse.

The lectures in Helsinki were delivered from a sitting position to allow the speaker to remain on camera. From a teacher’s point of view this is a problem as it removes an important element of presentation technique; the use of space.

I would be interested to know how the fact that the lectures were available electronically affected attendance in Helsinki. Also of interest would be to know how many students were physically present in the classroom, how many students started the course, how many dropped out, and what reasons were given for not completing the course.

The discussion and questions at the end of the lectures were not on the film, which was unfortunate as they might have been quite interesting. Lecturers should also be reminded that any questions from the audience cannot be picked up by the microphone and they should thus paraphrase the question for the non-Helsinki students before answering.

Community
The greatest weakness of the course was the lack of a learning community. A course should include teacher-to-student, student-to-student, and student-to-teacher information transfer and feedback. The course participants seemed to have a variety of backgrounds, based on the profiles some of them provided, and might have had interesting and contrasting viewpoints. Students generally feel it is important to know where they stand relative to other students – feedback, be it other students’ comments or comments from the teacher, answers the vital questions; what seems right about my ideas, what seems wrong about my ideas, and what should I do next?

Building such interaction into a course like this is not easy. Virtual learning platforms have message board functions but message boards only really work if there is a small group of people who already know each other well. Otherwise they tend to be dominated by a very small number of users and others just ignore them. Individual feedback from the teacher on each lecture entry would be nice but in view of the group sizes in Finnish universities is not very practical as it is likely to overload the teacher. (For which reason, many thanks for taking the time to comment on my proposal for an essay likely to remain unwritten.)

A possibility might be to arrange some kind of discussion group in universities where there are more than a handful of students following the course. There are, I believe, coordinators in many universities who could possibly take the role of discussion facilitator. This idea might seem a little alien to the Finnish university system where a lot of the learning appears to be of the listen, take notes, and then answer the questions style.

I don’t know how a sense of learning community could be fostered, but the effect of group dynamics on learning and motivation should not be overlooked.

To conclude, I enjoyed the course and thank you for the opportunity to take part.

Lecture 12 - Gender discourses on migration and trafficking

Lecture: Gender discourses on migration and trafficking in the Mekong Region
Bernadette Resurreccion
Asian Institute of Technology

Article: Migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion: A Background Paper for the 4th Greater Mekong Subregion Development Dialogue, Beijing, 5th May 2009
Federico Soda, Regional Programme Officer, International Organization for Migration (IOM)

---***---***---

The topic of the lecture and article was migration; a complex, multi-faceted issue. The article gave a clear and logical overview of the topic as it relates to the Mekong Region. Areas discussed included:

• the causes of migration – both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ effects
• the benefits and costs to sender and destination communities
• key migration flows – rural-rural and rural-urban, and transnational
• types of migrant – regular and irregular
• the distinction between smuggled and trafficked migrants
• and the various threats faced by migrants.

The key issues are broadly the same throughout the world:

• migrants do jobs the locals are not particularly interested in
• irregular migrants are at great risk of abuse and exploitation by unscrupulous employers (passports are routinely confiscated, safety regulations ignored, e.g. the Morecambe Bay cockling tragedy with the death of 23 Chinese migrants - this is near where I grew up and all locals know of the dangers of the sands)
• harassment by locals (which may be semi-official, e.g., the RELA corps volunteers in Malaysia)
• and problems with access to health and education services for migrants and their children.

While some generalizations can be made regarding the different experiences of regular and irregular migrants, and male and female migrants, I feel generalizations are somewhat problematic. The reality of migration is different for each individual.

It might also be worth asking why the stay-at-homes are seen as ‘doing the right thing’ and migrants as somehow suspect; people have been moving since the days of human life as hunters and gatherers.

A part of the lecture addressed the question of trafficking and women sex workers; to what extent sex workers are trafficked.

Definition of trafficking: “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of… … the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability … … for the purpose of exploitation.” UN Convention, quoted in Soda p4.

As prostitution is per se an exploitative relationship, it meets the definition of trafficking given above. The issue should not be whether sex workers - be they $10 a trick ‘working girls’, temporary wives, women looking after Finnish male tourists on their annual sunshine holiday, or rent boys - are trafficked or not (either in a defined legal sense or with a broader interpretation) but whether they are exploited.

The claim that viewing prostitution as exploitative denies women agency is, in my opinion, wrong. Working as a whore, be it howsoever euphemistically described, is not a free choice; it is a choice borne out of a lack of choices. Freedom of choice is constrained by poverty, drug addiction, social exclusion including attitudes to divorcees and single mothers, workplace power structures (sleeping your way to promotion, as seen in the fashion and film industries), and objectification of women. Young girls and boys do not aspire to be prostitutes; nor are there vocational qualifications for prostitutes; nor are positions for prostitutes openly advertised as such in ‘situations vacant’ columns.

The nature of prostitution is such that it has close links to criminality – money laundering and tax evasion, corruption (of police and other authorities), failure to meet health and safety regulations, amongst others.

The claim in the lecture that mass media imagery of the ideal woman is responsible for female sex workers being seen as trafficked victims I found questionable. Mass media imagery of men as macho hunks does not make a male nurse be viewed as a victim. But maybe I misunderstood something.

The lecturer stated that anti-trafficking policies, inspired by concerns about sex workers, have had the effect of reducing women’s migration possibilities. This is understandable because the policies target irregular migration, which is the main form of female (and male) migration in the region. It should be noted that anti-terrorism security initiatives have probably had the same effect on irregular male migration.

To conclude, migration has great benefits for both sender and destination communities; exploitation is wrong, be it of locals or migrants.

Lecture 11 - Water and development in Southeast Asia

Lecture: The interlinkages of water and development in Southeast Asia: The Mekong River case
Olli Varis
Helsinki University of Technology

Article: Water Resources Development and Impact Assessment in the Mekong Basin: Which Way to Go?
Marko Keskinen, Ambio, Vol 37, No 3, 193-198

---***---***---

The lecture presented key issues of water management as they relate to development generally and the Mekong region in particular. The lecture was delivered in the old-fashioned professorial style; lots of information but somehow the thread of the talk was difficult to follow, particularly how the last section on modern Lao and Cambodia related to water issues. But I liked the photos.

Globally, water management faces challenges related to:

• food supply and agriculture (especially in view of rapid urbanization)
• health (water-borne diseases a key cause of mortality and morbidity)
• energy (bio-energy and hydropower)
• environmental management (global – climate change; local/regional – biodiversity, wetland degradation)and natural catastrophes (floods and droughts).

The Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) model neatly encapsulated the combination of environmental, economic and social concerns within a framework of good governance and stakeholder participation.

Water management of the Mekong river area is made complicated by the monsoon rainfall pattern and the fact that the river flows through six countries; overlapping jurisdictions both between nations and within nations make management difficult. This point is stressed by Koskinen, who notes that various impact assessments suffer from a lack of co-ordination – no one body has a clear overview of all the water-related projects in the Mekong region and how they relate one to another.

An interesting question posed by the lecturer was why the upper reaches of the Mekong are so sparsely populated compared with other similar water basins. The region is on the border between the Indian and Chinese cultural spheres, and regions on the periphery tend to be less heavily populated (cf. Finnish population densities, where a third of the population lives in or around the Helsinki-Espoo-Vantaa metropolitan area) but I would agree with the lecturer that in view of the fertility of the land it is a surprising situation. I have no answer except to speculate that maybe the local culture did not value business and consequently no urban areas grew up that could act as magnets for population growth. Economic activity would then move downstream, with the upper areas acting as a source of raw materials.

My experience of urban areas of peninsular Malaysia leads me to think that the biggest problems with water management are flooding (because of unbridled construction connected with rapid urbanization) and waste management and waste-water treatment. Waterways are treated as sewers and the attitude of manufacturing industries to environmental issues is rather cavalier, with an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach. I am, however, optimistic since waterways recover, for example water quality in western Europe is much better than it was in the past and the Rhine river, for instance, recovered from the Schweizerhalle catastrophe (1986) quite quickly, and Asians are becoming increasingly aware of environmental issues.

Scientific knowledge in the field is also progressing – I recently heard about bioprecipitation, rain-making plant bacteria, which since different crops seem to harbour different quantities of such bacteria might suggest that cropping patterns could affect rainfall patterns; an important finding in view of the monoculture farming in many parts of the world.

Water is fundamental to mankind, and I enjoyed the lecture.

Lecture 10 - ASEAN regional economic integration

Lecture: ASEAN regional economic integration: Southeast Asia as a business environment
Erja Kettunen-Matilainen
Helsinki School of Economics

Article: The regional economy: Looking forward by looking back
Malcolm Cook, In: Southeast Asian Affairs 2008, Singh D and Than T M M (Eds), Singapore, 2008

---***---***---

The lecture presented an overview of regional integration via ASEAN and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), with some comments on foreign direct investment (FDI) and its role in the economies of SEA countries. The lecture was clearly structured and easy to follow. The main conclusions were:

1. Despite the diversity – culturally, historically and as regards trade and economic policies – regional economic cooperation and a considerable degree of integration has been achieved.
2. FDI has been a driver for growth, although since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 competition for FDI from China has remarkably increased.

The lecture avoided tricky issues such as whether FDI (in which control resides with the foreign company) and the major role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is a form of neo-colonialism; or to what extent the inflows of FDI lead to concentrations of power and are detrimental to democracy. The question of working conditions, particularly of sub-contractors to MNEs, was also not discussed. Neither was the role of the Chinese communities in SEA business.

Implicit in the lecture was the idea that liberalization is always a good thing (for trade presumably based on Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage) yet the immediate negative social impact of the Asian Financial Crisis was less disastrous in Malaysia, which under Mahathir ignored IMF advice, than in Thailand and Indonesia, which followed IMF instructions for greater liberalization, privatization, and a reduction of government intervention in the economy. It seems that economic intervention might reduce economic efficiency yet be better for equality and society as a whole. Interestingly, US policy in the current global financial crisis, triggered by irresponsible lending leveraged by incomprehensible innovative financial instruments, echoes that of Mahathir in 1997 – support for ailing industries, support of financial institutions in difficulties (recapitalization with government money), running a massive public debt etc. Dr M., true to his combative style, has not been reticent in enjoying a bit of schadenfreude.

One side-effect of the travails of US-style economics is that economic policy norms are being questioned. An area that is of interest is Islamic finance, in which Malaysia is a world leader. Worldwide, the Islamic banking sector has grown considerably, for reasons unrelated to the current crisis, and its more vociferous proponents claim that the world economy would not be in such a mess if the financial system had followed Islamic banking principles. In view of the large number of Muslims in the world, Malaysia might be positioning itself to challenge Singapore for the position as leader in finance in SEA.

A noteworthy aspect of Islamic finance is, in my opinion, that economic and finance policy is being re-connected to moral and political values. In recent years it has been fashionable for finance and economics to be taught as ‘scientific’ and somehow amoral. Although South Asians and not Southeast Asians, Nobel Prize winners, Amartya Sen (Nobel Prize in Economics) and Muhammad Yunus (an economist who received the Nobel Prize in Peace) show how Asian approaches can help redirect economics.

Lecture 9 - Burma-Myanmar: Beyond paradoxes and parameters

Lecture: Burma-Myanmar: Beyond Paradoxes and Parameters
Ko Ko Thett
Co-ordinator, Asia Europe People’s Forum
Article: Expanding military, shrinking citizenry and the new constitution in Burma
Susanne Prager Nyein., Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol 39, No. 4, Nov 2009, pp 638-648

---***---***---

Burma-Myanmar is a country I know very little about, having only followed western media debate about the advisability of economic sanctions and the selection of Aung San Suu Kyi as a Nobel prize winner, and recently having seen the film documentary Burma VJ. I remember also having enjoyed reading the historical novel The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh, which describes an Indian-Burmese family history.

The lecture presented recent Burmese-Myanmarese political history, factors influencing the current political situation, and possible outcomes.

The article re-stated the main ideas of the lecture, although the tone of the article’s conclusion was maybe more pessimistic than that of the lecturer; “the structural conditions of military rule and the civil-military relations makes the prospects for a real shift in the power relations in Burma look dismal” (p646). This conclusion can be considered relatively straightforward, since no military dictatorship willingly gives up power, and the debate around the Burmese New Constitution thus becomes of little relevance. A very nice observation in the article was the change in the description of the common populace from “working people” (lok tha pyi thu) during the time of Ne Win to “the class on the bottom” (a kye khan luh than; sa:) used by the current military regime (p644).

The beginning of the lecture presented horrendous human development statistics and an overview of Burma’s post-WW2 constitutional history. The lecturer then presented a series of parameters defining Burma’s political situation: the military (Tatmadaw), the people, geopolitical conditions, the political culture, and inter-ethnic conflict.

The key elements defining Burma-Myanmar’s fate are: Tatmadaw; the people including the Burmese political opposition; and the aspirations of the minority ethnic groups.

As with all military groups, Tatmadaw has its own mythology. It views itself as superior to civilians and the sole guardian of national unity. Its three main national causes are all nationalistic; non-disintegration of the nation, unification of the multi-ethnic nation, and preservation of national sovereignty. The ideas are very similar to those of the Indonesian military of Suharto’s era.

The people and the political opposition are in what the lecturer called “a double bind” – if they take part in political debate, following the rules of the regime, they legitimize the system; if they remain outside the system, they have little influence. The situation is common to all groups agitating for change in a non-democratic system, for example, during the Soviet era, or during various independence struggles (cf. Lai Kek and Chin Peng factions in the Malayan Communist Party during the late 1940s). A further factor affecting the Burmese-Myanmarese people’s attitude to politics are the scars of the brutality of the military - forced labour, poverty etc - and the scars of complicity - in a dictatorship everyone makes compromises (Note the large number of military, 500,000, relative to the size of the population). I briefly worked in Romania shortly after the fall of Ceausescu, and the legacy of mistrust and disillusion lingers long after the fall of a dictator.

The many minority ethnic groups of Burma have suffered greatly and there has been almost constant strife: the Karen uprisings, conflict with the Sha, discrimination against the Muslim Rohingya minority, expulsion of the Indian-Burmese, repression of the Anglo-Burmese community, etc. For positive change and development to occur, any democratic Burmese-Myanmarese government must be able to meet, even minimally, the aspirations of the minority ethnic groups for guarantees of cultural freedom.

To conclude, I would like to comment on the differing fates of Burma and Malaysia. They were both British colonies, they were both run by the British on relatively similar lines, they were both, for the standards of the time, relatively well-developed, they were (and are) both multi-ethnic, and they both gained independence as a consequence of Japanese occupation and British imperial fatigue. Yet, they have taken different paths: Burma a via dolorosa, and Malaysia, while not a path of sunny uplands, relatively steady political and economic progress. The reason is probably merely the chance of history. In Malaya, the Malayan Emergency of 1947 to 1959 was handled such that although British and Anzac soldiers fought against Malayan Communist Party insurgents (primarily ethnically Chinese) it was deemed an ‘emergency’ not a war, i.e. a police operation not a military operation. The Malayan army and police force were composed of Malays, but the Special Branch, who aided the British and Anzac military, were Chinese and able to provide excellent intelligence. The outcome was that when the country gained full independence the supremacy of civilian rule over the military had been cemented such that neither Malaysia nor Singapore, which was then part of Malaya, has political systems in which the military play a dominant role, unlike the other Southeast Asian nations.

Lecture 8 - Political situation in Thailand

Lecture: The political situation in Thailand: Contested democracy, the democratisation process, the roles of civil society organizations
Naruemon Thabchumpon
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Article: Thailand in 2008: Democracy and street politics
Ockey J., Southeast Asian Affairs (Singapore) 2009 315-333

---***---***---

The lecture had two main parts; a more theoretical description of the political situation in Thailand, and practical examples of case studies involving civil society organizations (CSO).

The first part included a discussion of substantive versus procedural democracy. Procedural democracy is in effect the delegation of power to an elite (cf. average income of MPs with national average income) with intermittent opportunities for the rulers to be selected by election. Substantive or participatory democracy is where democratic decision-making occurs at all levels and individuals can substantively affect outcomes. Problems associated with these interpretations are not unique to Southeast Asia, they can also be found elsewhere, the EU, for example, suffers a serious democratic deficit. In Finland the statutory co-operation agreement negotiations (YT-neuvotellut) are negotiations in name only. A further example is the new Finnish University law – I was invited to a meeting with Finnish MPs from south-western Finland to discuss the topic, which was done very politely, the only problem being that after the meeting, and off-the-record, one MP admitted that all substantive parts of the law had already been decided since it was a prestige project of one of the parties of the Finnish coalition. Substantive democracy is problematic for the ruling group as it implies the removal of hierarchical structures and a loss of power. On a lighter note, I can say that I have problems with notions of participatory democracy in my family; my children often do not understand that in certain matters Daddy decides!

In the lecture, the claim was made that the procedural democracy definition adopted in ASEAN countries means that the populace has limited rights. A very nice distinction was presented of “rule of law” versus “rule by law”, and likewise the presentation of various competing discourses of democracy in Thailand was very good. The discourse of “good governance” to overrule democratic principles is one that I personally dislike. It is commonly used and belittles people; rulers imply that the populace is too dim-witted to understand complicated issues. Interestingly, one of the world’s more successful states, Switzerland, defines the people as the sovereign and through the right to call a referendum if sufficient numbers wish allows direct influence on decision-making at all political levels.

The lecture dealt with the situation in Thailand at two levels; the national political level, and from the point of view of a study of civil society organizations. At a national level the struggle between the Red and Yellow groups seems to be a power play between two elites with little interest in issues interesting the majority of the population. Based on Ockey’s article, it seems that PAD’s actions are merely old-fashioned 'ends justify the means' thinking. The Sondhi quote in Ockey; “… same objective which are to protect the country [nation], religion and monarchy [king]” (p 326) shows the common approach of finding an enemy, real or imagined, against which exceptional actions are required. Ockey concludes that “Thailand will become very difficult to govern” (p 331). I would say that this is because the ruling elite wish to rule for the people rather than with the people.

The part of the lecture dealing with CSOs presented nine case studies. Most involved major infrastructural projects, which regularly have problems (cf. Botnia’s Fray Bentos mill in Uruguay (now to be transferred to UPM) and debate over energy projects such as nuclear power plants). The problem is essentially a question of benefits and externalities; who benefits and who bears the externalities.

One question raised in the lecture is how CSOs should safeguard the interests of the groups they represent – within or without the current political system, i.e. evolution or revolution. The debate has been around for a long time; compare the ideas of Antonio Gramsci.

Lecture 7 - Heritage, nationalism and identity in Southeast Asia

Lecture: Heritage, nationalism and identity in Southeast Asia
Michael Hitchcock
University of Chichester

Article: Asia fights to stem loss of cultural treasures, Thomas Kean, Myanmar Times, Dec 22, 2008. (http://www.globalheritagefund.org/news/conservation_news/asia_fights_to_stem_loss_of_cultural_treasures.asp, Accessed 15 Oct. 09)
‘Cannot find server’ message, read from Google Cache

---***---***---

The lecture had two main strands; a discussion of the concept of ‘heritage,’ and the relationship between heritage and identity.

‘Heritage’ was presented as an originally western concept and differences in its interpretation in the Asian context commented on. The lecture stated that the Indonesian word for heritage, ‘warisan’ means ‘inheritance,’ which has different connotations than the English word ‘heritage.’ I did a quick search with Google Translate and came up with the following translations:

• Malay to English: heritage
• Indonesian to English: (nouns) 1. inheritance, 2. heritage, 3. legacy, 4. bequest, 5. heirdom, 6. patrimony, 7. settlement, (adjectives) 1. inheritable, 2. hereditary, 3. patrimonial.

The various translations throw some light on the difficulty of translating the word ‘heritage’. The etymology of the English word was given by Online Etymology Dictionary as:
‘c.1225, "that which may be inherited," from O.Fr. eritage, from heriter "inherit," from L.L. hereditare, ult. from L. heres (gen. heredis) "heir." ’

My own personal definition of ‘heritage’ would be ‘collective memory.’

The World Heritage Convention (http://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext) divides heritage into cultural and natural heritage. Cultural heritage is sub-divided into monuments, groups of buildings, and sites. Natural heritage is sub-divided into natural features, geological and physiographical formations, and natural sites. In my opinion, this focus on the tangible overlooks the intangible elements of culture; skills, crafts, lifestyles etc.

The relationship between heritage and identity was central to the lecture. Historical perspectives are fundamental to the portrayal of heritage, and history is always seen through the prism of the present, hence, that which is chosen to be stressed reflects the elements that the prevailing ruling class want to be emphasized. The lecturer noted that the contribution of the Chinese community to Indonesian development is not shown in the heritage museum Taman Mini. An example from Malaysia is that recently the grave of the founder of the British colony of Penang, Francis Light, could not be found (http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=/2009/10/6/north/4842890&sec=North). The corollary to what it is decided is to be forgotten is the decision of what is to be remembered.

The politicisation of history and heritage leads to some contradictions, for example, the traditional heritage of ‘wayang kulit’ (shadow play) has had to be changed. The ruling Islamic PAS party of Kelantan deemed that the Javanese and Hindi elements made the tradition un-Islamic and consequently banned this heritage. The stories (or should that be histories?) have had to be re-written (http://allmalaysia.info/msiaknow/arts/dance_wayang_kulit.asp?s=culture). A second Malaysian example are the archaeological findings from the Bujang valley in Kedah; they provide evidence of a Hindu-Indian civilisation that pre-dates anything that has been found for a Malay civilisation in peninsular Malaysia, which contradicts the prevailing myth of nationhood.

The coda of the lecture, in which the lecturer presented a couple of his current projects, gave a further instance of the politicisation of heritage. Jemaayah Islamiah by emphasizing Arab-Islamic heritage and downplaying the Malay-Indonesian heritage is in effect trying to re-write history to its own ends. To my mind, the basic problem is the claim of exclusivity of heritage – “my version of history and heritage is the only right one” – be it a nationalistic perspective, an ethnic perspective or a religious perspective. It should be remembered that the heritage and history of Southeast Asia are multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multi-national; Southeast Asia has multiple heritages.