Cultural construction of illness, festival and music in Southeast Asia

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-415
Author(s):  
Muhamad Ali

Southeast Asia remains a rich region for students and scholars interested in understanding the place of culture within a variety of human activities. Three recent studies under review, Acts of integration, Bridges to the ancestors and Listening to an earlier Java, particularly demonstrate the ways in which culture plays a pertinent role in the health, performance and music of contemporary Southeast Asians. Although Acts of integration focuses on mental images, Bridges to the ancestors on a festival, and Listening to an earlier Java on musical sound, the studies shared the recognition of the interplay between two opposite yet interactive forces: sacred and secular; inner and outer; order and chaos; male and female. They argue that mental normality, aesthetics and music represent, shape and are shaped by culture characterised by such dichotomous categories. Amidst other studies which try to deconstruct culture as more fluid and hybrid, however, these works serve as a reminder of the place of culture as an underlying persistent force in shaping the views and lives of many Southeast Asian peoples.

1996 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles F. Keyes

The five cases of Protestant Christian practice in Indonesia and Thailand presented in this symposium are used to develop a sociology of Protestantism in Southeast Asia. A review is first undertaken of the history of Protestant missionary activity in Southeast Asia. Protestantism, it is observed, insists on the ultimate authority of the Bible. This authority has not been accepted by Southeast Asians until they have access to the Christian message in their own languages and they are motivated to adopt Christian practices as a means to confront deep crises in their lives. The establishment of Protestant Christianity has entailed the interpreting of the Christian message with reference to the non-Christian contexts in which Protestants in Southeast Asia live.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0257433
Author(s):  
Sze Mun Thor ◽  
Jun Wern Yau ◽  
Amutha Ramadas

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is frequently associated with various health issues and is a major contributor to morbidity and mortality worldwide, particularly with its recent relevance to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). To combat its increasing prevalence in Southeast Asia, numerous intervention programs have been implemented. We conducted a scoping review on recent interventions to manage MetS among Southeast Asians using standard methodologies. Cochrane, Embase, Ovid MEDLINE, PubMed, and Scopus databases were systematically searched to yield peer-reviewed articles published between 2010–2020. We included 13 articles describing 11 unique interventions in four Southeast Asian countries: Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. These interventions were broadly categorized into four groups: (i) nutrition (n = 4); (ii) physical activity (n = 2); (iii) nutrition and physical activity (n = 2); and (iv) multi-intervention (n = 3). Most studies investigated the effects of an intervention on components of MetS, which are anthropometry, blood pressure, glucose-related parameters, and lipid profile. Significant improvements ranged from 50% of studies reporting serum triglyceride and HDL-cholesterol levels to 100% for waist circumference. Evidence on interventions for individuals with MetS remains limited in Southeast Asia. More studies from other countries in this region are needed, especially on the effects of dietary interventions, to effectively address gaps in knowledge and provide sufficient data to design the ideal intervention for Southeast Asian populations.


Author(s):  
Anthony Reid

It is a pleasure to introduce this second issue of the enterprising new journal, IKAT.  It is breaking new ground in opening Indonesia to its region, and establishing a high standard of scholarly publication in English. It is good to see Southeast Asians taking up the challenge of understanding their own region.  As the Orientalist tradition of Europe weakens, institutions and individuals in the region must take up the challenge of understanding, preserving and analysing Southeast Asian cultures, many of them endangered.  Southeast Asian Studies must return to Southeast Asia, and IKAT is certainly helping this process.


1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donn Bayard ◽  
Pisit Charoenwongsa

We find this a most curious attack, both in tone and in substance; Loofs-Wissowa appears to believe that we, Solheim, Gorman, and the media have been engaged in a conspiracy to cloud the minds of Westerners and Southeast Asians alike on the origins of metallurgy in the region. Loofs-Wissowa evidently feels that Southeast Asian laymen view this question as equal in importance to contemporary issues there (which is of course not the case). He also believes that it is the most burning issue in archaeology since Piltdown or Glozel, splitting the profession into “Believers” in the “long dates” and “Non Believers”. This is again rather an exaggeration; we would estimate the “Believers” to number not more than a few hundred, while the “Non Believers” may be counted on the fingers of one hand (Marschall, Sørensen, Sieveking, and of course Loofs-Wissowa himself). The remainder of the archaeological world (i.e., over 90%) has other questions to occupy it. However, Loofs-Wissowa is certainly correct in pointing out the attention paid to the question of early metallurgy over the past few years, and we welcome this opportunity to counter his arguments and distinguish between our views and those published by the media. This may best be done by first pointing out errors of omission in the facts presented by Loofs-Wissowa, by examining basic errors in his conceptual framework, and finally by answering the three specific questions he poses.


Author(s):  
Anthony Reid

It is a pleasure to introduce this second issue of the enterprising new journal, IKAT: The Indonesian Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.  It is breaking new ground in opening Indonesia to its region, and establishing a high standard of scholarly publication in English. It is good to see Southeast Asians taking up the challenge of understanding their own region. As the Orientalist tradition of Europe weakens, institutions and individuals in the region must take up the challenge of understanding, preserving and analyzing Southeast Asian cultures, many of them endangered. Southeast Asian Studies must return to Southeast Asia, and IKAT is certainly helping this process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-58
Author(s):  
Rahdiansyah Rahdiansyah ◽  
Yulia Nizwana

Cultural disputes, and others, often occur between neighboring countries in Southeast Asia and can be the seeds of disharmony, of course, this is not desirable. Southeast Asia as a cultural scope that is interrelated in history, has local wisdom in resolving disputes, resolving this dispute is known as deliberation. Deliberation is an identity that must be prioritized as a wise cultural approach for the ASEAN community. The purpose of this study is to explore the local wisdom of Southeast Asian people in resolving disputes in their communities and implementing them as a solution for the ASEAN community. Recognizing each other as cultural origins often occur between Malaysian and Indonesian communities. As a nation of the same family, this is commonplace, but the most important thing is how to solve it. Interviewing the people of both countries is the first thing to do in looking at this problem, how they understand and see culture in their culture. Questionnaires are distributed as much as possible, each data obtained will be processed and classified according to nationality, education, age, and others. The findings will be a study to see the perspectives of the two countries in understanding history, culture, and cultural results in addressing the differences of opinion that occur. At least the description of the root of the problem is obtained, why this problem occurs, what are the main causes, how to understand it, how to react to it, and lead to the resolution of the dispute over ownership of culture itself


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2019) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Delphine Allès

This article highlights the formulation of comprehensive conceptions of security in Indonesia, Malaysia and within the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), well before their academic conceptualisation. These security doctrines have been the basis of the consolidation of state and military apparatuses in the region. They tend to be overlooked by analyses praising the recent conversion of Southeast Asian political elites to the “non-traditional security”? agenda. This latter development is perceived as a source of multilateral cooperation and a substitute for the hardly operationalisable concept of human security. However, in the region, non-traditional security proves to be a semantic evolution rather than a policy transformation. At the core of ASEAN’s security narrative, it has provided a multilateral anointing of “broad” but not deepened conceptions of security, thus legitimising wide-ranging socio-political roles for the armed forces.


Contexts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-25
Author(s):  
Maryann Bylander

In the Southeast Asian context, legal status is ambiguous; it enlarges some risks while lessening others. As is true in many contexts across the Global South, while documentation clearly serves the interest of the state by offering them greater control over migrant bodies, it is less clear that it serves the goals, needs, and well-being of migrants.


2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane A. Desierto

The development of international law in South and Southeast Asia exemplifies myriad ideological strands, historical origins, and significant contributions to contemporary international law doctrines’ formative and codification processes. From the beginnings of South and Southeast Asian participation in the international legal order, international law discourse from these regions has been thematicallypostcolonialand substantivelydevelopment-oriented.Postcolonialism in South and Southeast Asian conceptions of international law is an ongoing dialectical project of revisioning international legal thought and its normative directions — towards identifying, collocating, and applying South and Southeast Asian values and philosophical traditions alongside the Euro-American ideologies that, since the classical Post-Westphalian era, have largely infused the content of positivist international law. Of increasing necessity to the intricacies of the postmodern international legal system and its institutions is how the postcolonial project of South and Southeast Asian international legal discourse focuses on areas of international law that create the most urgent development consequences: trade, investment, and the international economic order; the law of the sea and the environment; international humanitarian law, self-determination, socio-economic and cultural human rights.


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