Management of the Phanom-Surin Archaeological Site in Thailand: Concept, Policies and Practices

The Phanom-Surin (PNS) archaeological site contains the remains of a sewn-plank vessel that is dated to the 9th century CE and discovered in Thailand’s mangrove swamp. As the only accessible sewn-plank vessel archaeology in the world, it provides research opportunities and potential for collaboration between heritage stakeholders. Preservation of the site within its context is crucial. Throughout this article, I will explain the importance of the PNS site management and its context based on my experience. The fuller understanding of the PNS site relies much on the information to be extracted from the materials and contexts. This article therefore encourages the preservation and management of the site within the original context. There are several relevant international guidelines for heritage and environmental management, such as the World Heritage Operational Guidelines, the Annex of the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) 2001 Convention and the technical Ramsar Convention, all of which can help develop domestic framework and practices. This article aims to draw public and government attention towards the PNS site, and discusses concepts, policies and practices relating to the site.

People and the Sea: A Values Perspective in the Conservation Management of Maritime Heritage in the Philippines

As demonstrated in archaeology, underwater cultural heritage (UCH) has provided significant contributions towards the understanding of heritage connections across the globe. However, the development of the discipline in the Philippines has also been hampered by confusing legalities, treasure hunting activities, and financial constraints that diminish the influence of its impact and potential reach. More so, the effects of natural hazards, climate change, and other human activities on UCH have not yet been fully documented, making it more susceptible to potential threats and destruction. The COVID-19 pandemic makes archaeological campaigns and monitoring even more difficult. These considerations make Philippine UCH vulnerable and raise questions whether its contribution will still be relevant for the present and future generations. This article provides a status update of underwater archaeological activities and synthesises the challenges of managing UCH in the Philippines in the past 40 years. It outlines the practices, partnerships, and transitions made by various stakeholders in response to the growing discipline and community interest. This article problematises the value ascription of these stakeholders to UCH as seen in conventional arrangements, development of policies, and bureaucratic set-ups. The applicability of the values-led theory and the people-centred management model is examined given the traditional valuing of UCH that is material or fabric-based. The gaps pointed here are opportunities to build a shared stewardship view that connects UCH in the entirety of people and the sea wellbeing.

A retrospective on the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage

November 8th to 12th, 2011, marked the first targeted gathering of people involved in researching, managing, and developing underwater cultural heritage (UCH) in the Asia-Pacific region. Since then, the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage (APCONF) has been convened every three years, providing a unique opportunity to bring together members of government agencies, universities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), museums, the private sector, and the wider community. Participants from over 35 countries have attended the conference, making it a truly international endeavour. The APCONF was created in part to promote awareness of UCH on a wider scale. As such, one of the primary directives of the inaugural conference was to ensure that all papers presented would be recorded in full in the official conference proceedings, so as to establish an ongoing archive of the critical work being done in this region. This article will examine the wider benefits of creating this regional network through the APCONF, arguing that it provides an important venue for face-to-face networking that can lead to additional collaborations, and contributes to the understanding of how the conference may evolve in the future. The fact that the APCONF is not tied to a specific membership base provides not only unusual flexibility but also financial and infrastructural unsurety. The conference is organised by a group of dedicated volunteers and funded almost entirely by donations. As we stop to consider the first decade of the APCONF’s achievements, we also need to determine the best ways to ensure its sustainable future success.

Unruly Puppets: Producing the Urban Poor in a Bangladeshi Television Idol Competition

Magic Tin Chakar Taroka (Magic Three-Wheeler Star) or Tin Chaka (Three- Wheeler) is a reality competition to find music talent exclusively from the urban poor of Dhaka city. This programme was shown on Bangladeshi satellite television in 2008. The present article is an ethnographic exploration of the Tin Chaka event which demonstrates how the cultural identity of the urban poor in Dhaka has been performed by the production of ordinary celebrities in the visual media. In doing so, a combination of on-screen and off-screen observations were undertaken for a period of six months which was complemented by semiological interpretation of adverts, jingles and other visual materials. In this article, I argue that, despite its admirable inclusivity and thereby remarkably instant acceptance by the audience, the reason behind the discontinuation of Tin Chaka in following years lies in the inscriptions of the show as a charitable undertaking, an act which has often been performed in the reality television programmes in the name of “democratisation”.

Exploring Malaysian Undergraduates’ Decision-Making Patterns in Different Situational Contexts

Decisions are made all the time. While the decisions that humans make should ideally be objective decisions, almost all the time the decisions that are made are influenced by many overlapping factors that vary from one situation to another. This includes decision maker’s environment, their past experiences, cognitive biases, individual differences and belief in personal relevance. Past studies have shown that the decisions that individuals make can be linked to their social behaviours and/ or socio-economic status. Hence, the current study aims to explore the decision-making patterns of a group of Malay-English bilingual Malaysian undergraduates (n = 128) based on the decisions that they made when reading 48 situational statements that are either in Malay (24 statements) or English (24 statements). Sixty-six of these bilinguals were from the low-income group whereas the remaining 62 were from the high-income group. To explore their social behaviour, the situational statements were presented to them in three different themes, namely, “Dictatorship”, “Jealousy” and “Charity”, each with three different options for them to choose from. The statements were also presented with or without the inclusion of a Malay or a Western cultural element. Results show different decision-making patterns in the three different themes. However, although past studies showed that income group, language proficiency and the language used in which the studies are conducted play a role in decision-making, neither of these had significant impact on the decisions that the respondents of the current study made. The findings from the current study suggest that there may be other factors that shaped the decision-making patterns of Malaysian undergraduates today.

Revealing a Maritime Cultural Landscape of Hong Kong: The Sai Kung Case Study

Hong Kong island is located in Southern China at the mouth of the Pearl River. Its coastal location down river from the significant port-city of Guangzhou (formerly Canton), is strategically located in the trade route known as the Maritime Silk Road, the 2,000-year-old trade between China, Southeast Asia, India and Arabia. It was because of this trade that the waters and islands at the Pearl River mouth were frequented by many nations, and where the Portuguese had their port-city, Macau from 1557, and the British were based on Hong Kong island from 1842. Over the next 60 years, the British leased further surrounding territories and the arrangement eventually led to the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, hereafter called the Hong Kong region. A significant maritime cultural landscape was built up, which included sites from earlier periods. An example of this maritime cultural landscape can be seen in the Sai Kung (eastern) district of the Hong Kong region. Many ships travelled along this coastline between the northern China ports and Guangzhou, and a number of coastal facilities were established. Beginning in 2009, a group of Hong Kong residents (Hong Kong Underwater Heritage Group) implemented a series of maritime archaeological projects in the Sai Kung district in collaboration with the Hong Kong Maritime Museum (HKMM). The results of this work can be seen in three maritime archaeology survey and excavation projects implemented from 2014 to 2017, including the discovery of a 1,000-year-old underwater cultural heritage (UCH) site. They complement the many coastal cultural heritage in the Sai Kung district to reveal its maritime cultural landscape.

Continuity and Transformation of Rural Communal Temples in Vietnam: A Case Study of Tân Chánh Village, Long An Province

Vietnamese communal temples (đình làng) were primarily established with two functions: (1) as a state-patronised institution to organise and control the village politically and culturally and (2) as a place of worship of village deities and meritorious predecessors. Both functions interact and complement each other – in many cases, the second serves as both a “means” and “technique” to deploy the first. However, nowadays the administrative role is no longer available; instead, the spiritual aspects are on the rise as a response to the increasing interaction of Buddhism, Caodaism, and folk beliefs as well as the impact of economic development and urban migration. Village elders learn to organise the temple into a communal socio-cultural institution, whereby cross-village temples have formed a cultural nexus of “power”. This study finds that while several transformed into the form of “temple of heroes”, Tân Chánh temple has been mobilised and transformed into a civic “religious and socio-cultural centre” at the grassroots level. The socio-economic background of the area has caused such transformation. While the practical demand for communication and emotional exchanges among village members vividly ensures the continuity of the temple’s tradition, the loss of direct state control paves the way for its transformation. Both continuity and transformation govern the current religious activities of Tân Chánh temple but there is always a challenge to compromise and integrate these two directions. However, the remaining function of god worship by which rituals are performed as “cultural agents” still binds the villagers together and gives them access to crossing boundaries.

Underwater Cultural Heritage in Asia Pacific and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage

Underwater cultural heritage (UCH) is a precious part of humanity’s shared history and heritage as it provides vital evidence and information about the interaction of humans with oceans, lakes and rivers. The Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 2001 to protect this heritage which has become significantly vulnerable to threats such as pillaging, commercial exploitation and the development of the seabed with the evolution of marine technology in the latter half of the 20th century. The Convention celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2021 and has been ratified by 68 countries. Its annex, which provides rules about the activities directed at UCH, has become a major reference and is recognised as the established scientific standard for underwater archaeology and research today. Despite the growing recognition and application by the international community, the Convention has been ratified only by four countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Many underwater sites and shipwrecks have been commercially salvaged, particularly in Southeast Asia, and numerous artefacts recovered from the sites were often put up for auction, leading to irrevocable damage and loss of this valuable cultural heritage to future generations. This article as one of the themed articles dedicated to the UCH in Asia Pacific argues the roles of the Convention and the challenges and opportunities for the protection of UCH particularly in Southeast Asia. UCH contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and can play an important role in sustainable community and economic development. Its values and importance deserve to be widely recognised and advocated. Efforts for safeguarding cultural heritage in Asia Pacific needs to be pursued and enhanced through joining the 2001 Convention and with international support and cooperation.

Budget Deliberation as Communicative Practice: The Case of a Rural Municipality in the Philippines

This study explores how municipal council members communicate with each other during budget deliberations, and suggests ways in how they ought to communicate more effectively with each other. Guided by Grounded Practical Theory, the researcher has analysed the transcribed talks of the budget deliberations of a rural municipality in the Philippines from 2013 to 2016. Specifically, the researcher delves into three levels of budget deliberation as a communicative practice: (1) problem level or the dilemma that the municipal council members are presented within the conduct of the budget deliberations, (2) technical level or the “discourse moves” or strategies employed by the municipal council members to manage the dilemma and (3) philosophical level, which starts with “situated ideals” or the municipal council members’ belief as to how they “ought” to act in the communicative practice. Through the analysis of transcribed talks and semi-structured interviews, the researcher has identified three problems that municipal council members encounter during budget deliberations: (1) technicalities of the budget process and documents, (2) lack of information and (3) politics. To address these problems, municipal council members employ communicative strategies that could facilitate comprehension and/or consensus, stall, or fast-track the budget deliberation, namely: (1) code switch, (2) referral and deferral, (3) establishment of openness, assertion of competence, and making a plea, (4) clarification and suggestion, (5) repetition, (6) show of empathy for constituents, (7) sarcasm, (8) redirection and restriction, (9) silence and (10) termination. Except for sarcasm and silence, these communicative strategies are also used to achieve the situated ideal of duty-centered budget deliberation that places importance on respect and continuous dialogue. The reconstruction of budget deliberation as a communicative practice shows that despite communicative problems, the municipal council members employ communicative strategies to help them accomplish their duties. The results also allow for the reflection on improvements to the budget deliberations and its implications on governance.

Underwater Cultural Heritage in Asia Pacific: Introduction

This 2021 themed issue of the International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies explores a diverse heritage of humanity found throughout the Asia-Pacific region – its “Underwater Cultural Heritage” (UCH). The study of UCH dates from the 1960s through the pioneering effort of Dr. George Bass and his work in the Mediterranean. Sadly Dr. Bass passed away in March 2021, but his legacy lives on in all of us who work in this field and in the community who benefit from the knowledge that he inspired to be revealed.