Syllabus 2020 (Subject to Minor Revision)

Anthropology 244a Fall 2020	Professor Erik Harms
Course Meetings: T,Th 9:00 am – 10:15 am Sections: 1hr Optional Teaching Fellow: Jill Tan	Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2:00-4 pm To be held on Zoom
Location: ZOOM	Department of Anthropology 10 Sachem Street erik.harms@yale.edu

THIS COURSE WILL BE HELD SYNCHRONOUSLY ON ZOOM

Default will be to not record sessions, unless an expressed need arises for accessibility reasons.

Enrollment will be capped at 18.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the extraordinary diversity of Southeast Asian peoples, cultures, and political economy. Broadly focused on the nation-states that have emerged since the end of World War II (Brunei, Burma [Myanmar], Cambodia, Indonesia, East Timor, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), the course explores the benefits and limits to a regional perspective. Crossing both national and disciplinary boundaries, the course will introduce students to key elements of Southeast Asian geography, history, language and literature, belief systems, marriage and family, music, art, agriculture, industrialization and urbanization, politics and government, ecological challenges, and economic change. In addition to providing a broad and comparative survey of “traditional” Southeast Asia, the course will place special emphasis on the intellectual and practical challenges associated with modernization and development, highlighting the ways different Southeast Asian nations contend with the forces of globalization.

The principle readings will include key works from a multidisciplinary range of fields covering anthropology, art, economics, geography, history, literature, music, and political science. No prior knowledge of Southeast Asia is expected.

GRADING AND COURSE WORK

Grades will be based primarily on the written assignments (including drafts and final essays, and in-class writing assignments), and student participation in the class.  The total course grade will be calculated as a percentage of accumulated points. (A = 93-100; A- = 90-92; B+ = 87-89; B = 83-86; B- = 80-82; etc.).

• · Major assignments are indicated in the chart below, and include blogging assignments, one short essay concerning a Southeast Asian news event chosen by the student, and one independent research paper on a topic chosen by the student. A map quiz will be worth 50 points. Students will also contribute five short responses on select course readings, worth 10 points each. Students will select which five readings they would like to write about after week three.
• · Attendance and classroom participation are essential to success in the course, and students who fail to attend all class meetings, or who consistently arrive late or fail to participate, will see their final course grade affected.

Major assignments and their due dates are as follows:

Date Due	Topic	Weight of Paper
Periodic (5 per semester)	Reading Responses	25 X 2 = 50
All Semester	Classroom Participation and Preparation	100
Sept. 22	Map Assignment	50
Oct. 16	Ripped from the Headlines Paper	100
Dec. 1 & 3	Final Paper Draft and Presentation	50
Dec. 10	Final Research Paper	200

 Course Policies

• Students must attend all of the scheduled classes, unless excused in advance by the instructor.  Students anticipating the need to miss class for religious holidays or for approved participation in University athletics should inform the instructor during the first two weeks of class.
• Students must hand in papers on time at the beginning of class on the date indicated on this syllabus.  Unless otherwise indicated, papers should be double-spaced, using standard 12 point font, with 1 inch margins.  Unexcused late papers will not receive anything higher than a “B”.  Students anticipating the need for an extension must forewarn the instructor at least one week in advance.  On occasion, I will ask you to submit papers online using the “canvas” course website or via email.  Papers or assignments submitted electronically should always be saved as Microsoft Word documents with standardized filenames according to the following format:

          yourlastname.assignment#.doc  (e.g.: “harms.1a.doc”)

• Unless otherwise noted, the readings indicated for a particular week should be completed by the first class meeting of the week.
• Don’t plagiarize!  Students should be familiar with Yale’s policy on academic honesty, located in the student handbook (pages 42-44):

          http://yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/URs%202015-2016(1).pdf

And students should visit the following useful guide to citing sources at:

          http://library.duke.edu/research/guides/citing/

If you have questions about citing sources or remain unclear about plagiarism, please feel free to ask prof. Harms, a reference librarian in any of the Yale libraries, or staff members at the Yale College Writing Center. If you plagiarize you will fail the class.

Course Materials

The following required texts are available for purchase wherever you purchase books these days (I wish it was a small independent brick and mortar bookseller, but I suppose I’m a dreamer):

• Scott, James C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN: 978-0-300-03641-1

All other course readings indicated in the course schedule are available as electronic text reserves accessible online via the links on this syllabus or alphabetically at the course bibliography:

http://seasia.yale.edu/course-portal/course-bibliography

• On an experimental basis, I will be periodically uploading map-based lecture notes and study guides. In order to access these, students should download the free version of Google Earth, available at:

https://www.google.com/earth/

COURSE SCHEDULE

INTRODUCTION

Week 1: Course Introduction: Encountering Southeast Asia

Tuesday, September 1st: Introduction to the class.

Thursday, September 3rd: Getting Situated

• Osborne, Milton (2004). What is Southeast Asia? Southeast Asia: An Introductory History. St. Leonards, NSW, Australia, Allen & Unwin: 1-17.
  • [Note: this reading is purposely simple. Read it first, just to get situated. Then read the next article.]
• Paul H. Kratoska, Remco Raben, and Henk Schulte Nordholt. 2005. “Locating Southeast Asia.” In Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space, 1-19. Singapore Athens: Singapore University Press ; Ohio University Press.
  • (Optional) Rafael, Vicente L. 1994. “The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States.” Social Text (41): 91-111. https://doi.org/10.2307/466834.
  • (Optional) Anderson, Benedict. 1998. The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. New York: Verso.
     

PART ONE: Geographical, Social-Cultural, and Political Diversity

Week 2: Geography and the Human Landscape

Tuesday, September 8th: Rainy Season / Dry Season, Land / Water, Islands / Mainlands

• Rigg, Jonathan (1990). Southeast Asia: Physical and Historical Threads. Southeast Asia: A Region in Transition. London ; Boston, Unwin Hyman: 1-18.
• Padawangi, Rita, and Mike Douglass. 2015. “Water, Water Everywhere: Toward Participatory Solutions to Chronic Urban Flooding in Jakarta.” Pacific Affairs 88 (3): 517-550.
• Padwe, Jonathan. 2020. “Cambodia’s Northeast Hills.” In Distrurbed Forests, Fragmented Memories: Jarai and Other Lives in the Cambodian Highlands, 26-47. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Thursday, September 10th: Upland / Lowland, Rural / Urban

• Cham H’Roi Girl, and H’Mong Thai School-Girl in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
• Anderson, Benedict. (1996) “Census, Map, Museum.” In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso.
• Scott, James C. (2009). Hills, Valleys, and States. in The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, Yale University Press: 1-39.

Week 3: Ethno-Linguistic Diversity

Tuesday, September 15th: Linguistic Diversity and Socio-Linguistic Relationships

• The Beauty Contestant in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Geertz, Clifford (1960). Selections on Javanese Language. The Religion of Java. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
• Rafael, Vicente L. 1995. “Taglish, or the Phantom Power of the Lingua Franca.” Public Culture 8 (1): 101-126.
• Hsieh, Jessica. (2011). Speak Good English Lah!: Prescriptive language policy in Singapore. New Haven, Student Final Paper Modern Southeast Asia, Yale University:1-14.
  • (Optional) Goddard, Cliff (2005). Language Families, Linguistic Areas and Language Situations.The Languages of East and Southeast Asia: An Introduction. Oxford, N.Y., Oxford University Press: 27-51.

Map assignment for next week: https://yale.instructure.com/courses/58637/assignments/186673

Thursday, September 17th: The Politics of Difference (Ethnicity and Racism, and also “Spacism”)

• The Chinese Mestizo and The Malay Gangster in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Duncan, Christopher (2004). Legislating Modernity Among the Marginalized. Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities. Christopher R. Duncan, Ed. Ithaca, Cornell University Press: 1-23.
• Reyes, Victoria. 2019. “Born in the Shadow of Bases.” In Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines, 105-123. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Zhou, Taomu. 2019. “Who Are the Chinese in the Book?” In Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War, 5-11. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Menon, Alka V. 2019. “Cultural gatekeeping in cosmetic surgery: Transnational beauty ideals in multicultural Malaysia.” Poetics 75: 101354.

Week 4: Kinship, Family and Gender

Tuesday, September 22nd: Kinship, the Family, and Identity

• Rydstrøm, Helle. 2001. “ ‘Like a White Piece of Paper’. Embodiment and the Moral Upbringing of Vietnamese Children.” Ethnos 66 (3): 394-413.
• Carsten, Janet (1995). The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi. American Ethnologist. 22(2): 223-241.
• Conklin, Harold. (2011 [1960]). Maling, a Hanunóo Girl from the Philippines. Everyday Life in Southeast Asia. K. M. Adams and K. A. Gillogly. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University

**ASSIGNMENT 1 DUE: In-class Map Quiz**

Thursday, September 24th: Gender

• Miss Beer Lao and The Single Woman in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Brenner, Suzanne (1995). Why Women Rule the Roost: Rethinking Javanese Ideologies of Gender and Self-Control. Bewitching Women, Pious men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia. Aihwa Ong and Michael Peletz, Ed. Berkeley, University of California Press: 19-50.
• Cannell, Fenella (1999). “Beauty and the Idea of America” Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• (Optional) Peletz, Michael (1994). Neither Reasonable nor Responsible: Contrasting Representations of Masculinity in a Malay Society. Cultural Anthropology. 9(2): 135-178.

Film: Match Made (view clip in class, link to full film here)

Week 5: Religion and Cosmology

Tuesday, September 29th: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity

• Rudnyckyj, Daromir. (2009). “Spiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia.” Cultural Anthropology 24(1): 104-141.
• Smith-Hefner, Nancy. J. (2007). “Javanese Women and the Veil in Post-Soeharto Indonesia.” The Journal of Asian Studies 66(2): 389-420.
• Cannell, Fenella (1999). The Funeral of the ‘Dead Christ’. Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 165-182.

Thursday, October 1st: Buddhism, Confucianism, and the World of the Spirits

• The Buddhist Ascetic and The Spirit Medium in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Keyes, Charles (1995). Selections on Theravada Buddhism. The Golden Peninsula: Culture and Adaptation in Mainland Southeast Asia. Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press: 78-90; 113-126.
• Soucy, Alexander. 2006. “Consuming loc—creating on: Women, offerings and symbolic capital in northern Vietnam.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 35 (1): 107-131.
   

Film: Love Man Love Woman

Week 6: Political Systems

Tuesday, October 6th: Political Developments in Post-Colonial and Post-War SEA

• The National Leader and The Government Official in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Selections from Southeast Asian Constitutions
• Owen, Norman G. et al (2005). Industrialization and its Implications; Human Consequences of the Economic “Miracle”; Malaysia Since 1957; Singapore and Brunei; Indonesia: The First Fifty Years; The Kingdom of Thailand; The Philippines since 1972; Vietnam after 1975; Cambodia since 1975; Laos since 1975; Burma Becomes Myanmar. The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press: 379-506.

Thursday, October 8th: “Freedom,” ASEAN-style

• ASEAN Declaration and ASEAN vision 2020
• Zakaria, Fareed (1994). Culture is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew.Foreign Affairs. 73(2): 109-126.
• Chua Beng Huat (2017) “Introduction,” Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

**Ripped from the Headlines Assignment: Post a few blog posts about SEA Media by Friday, Oct. 9th.

 

PART TWO: Political Economy and Conflicting Experiences of Modernity

Week 7: Modern Dreams and the Dark Side of Modernity

Tuesday, October 13th: The Cambodian Genocide and Other Modern Nightmares

• View film: Golden Slumbers, by Davy Chou (2011). Available streaming, please access via this link in Yale library catalog.
• Zani, L. (2018). Bomb Ecologies. Environmental Humanities, 10(2), 528-531.
  • (Optional) McCoy, Alfred. W. (1972). Flowers of Evil: The CIA and The Heroin Trade. Harper’s Magazine: 47-53.
  • (Optional) Kiernan, Ben (2004). The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-1979. A Century of Genocide Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Samuel Totten et al, Ed. New York, Routledge: 338-373.

Thursday, October 15th: Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya in Myanmar

• Prasse-Freeman, Elliott. 2017. “The Rohingya crisis.” Anthropology Today 33 (6): 1-2.
• Wade, Francis. 2017. “Prologue, Chapter 1,and Chapter 4.” In Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim ‘Other’. London: Zed.

Film: New Year Baby

**ASSIGNMENT 2: Ripped from the Headlines, due on course website by midnight, Friday Oct. 16th.**

**PAPER PROPOSALS**Before the end of Week Eight please post a brief, one paragraph proposal for your final paper to the course website. Proposals should include a brief description of the topic, and a preliminary bibliography. As the semester progresses, we will schedule individual meetings to discuss your final paper proposals.

Week 8: Agricultural Economies, Social Change, and Resistance

Tuesday, October 20th: What Counts as Resistance? Southeast Asian Agricultural Diversity and Agricultural capitalism

• Scott, James C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. [Read Preface. Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3 & Ch 4]

Thursday, October 22nd: Continued discussion: Hegemony or False Consciousness?

• Read Ch 7 & Ch 8 of Weapons of the Weak

**Final Paper Proposal Due Before October Recess**

Week 9: Migration and Mobility

Tuesday, October 27th: Migration and Mobility

• The Bangladeshi Worker and in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Mills, Mary Beth (1995). “Attack of the Widow Ghosts” in  Aihwa Ong and Michael Peletz, ed. Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Thursday, October 29th: Migration and Mobility 2

• Carruthers, Andrew M. 2019. “Policing Intensity.” Public Culture 31 (3): 469-496.
• Lim, Nicole, and Anju Mary Paul. 2020. “Stigma on a spectrum: differentiated stigmatization of migrant domestic workers’ romantic relationships in Singapore.” Gender, Place & Culture: 1-23.

[[Note Revised Syllabus for Weeks 10-13 below]]

Week 10: Research and Writing Interlude

Tuesday, November 3rd:Research Interlude

• Two or three peer-reviewed articles of your choice on the topic of your final paper

There will be an in-class exercise in small groups to discuss some of the ideas emerging from your reading of sources for your papers.

Thursday, November 5th: Writing Interlude

• Lapcharoensap, Rattawut (2004). Farangs. Over there: how America sees the world. London, Granta: 189-203.
• Please bring to class one image that you feel “captures” your final paper. The image can come from any source, but please have it in a digital form (Like .tiff, .pdf, .jpg)

In class we will discuss the short story and also engage in some creative descriptive free-writing, using the image you bring as a prompt to get you thinking about your papers.

In class, read excerpt from Tsing (2011) “Dark Rays.”

 

PART THREE: The (Dark) Arts of Change

Week 11: Ambivalent forces of Social Change (Urbanization and Environment)

For this week, please read:

Tuesday, November 10th: Cruel Beauty, Dreams and the Dark Side of Development

• Harms, Erik (2012) “Beauty as Control” in American Ethnologist 29(4): 735-750.  [Cam]  [Alternate link to text here]
• Dove, Michael (1996). Rice-Eating Rubber and People-Eating Governments.Ethnohistory. 43(1): 33-63.
• Pramodya Ananta Toer (1996). My Kampung [Kampungku]. Indonesia. 61(April): 25-32.

Thursday, November 12th: Apparitions of Modernity

• Ong, Aihwa (1987). “Selections” Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. Albany: State University of New York: 179-221. [Zev]
• Ho Anh Thai (2001). The Goat Meat Special. Old Truths, New Revelations. K. K. Seet and Asean Committee on Culture and Information, Eds. Singapore, Times Books International: 318-326.
• Wong, Cyril (2015 [2005]). The Boy with the Flower the Grew out of His Ass. Singapore, Math Paper Press. [**Note, this copy contains an essay and the story itself. You only have to read the story, but can read the essay if you like**]

Week 12: Art and Music

Tuesday, November 17th: The Politics of Southeast Asian Art and Music

• Mrázek, Jan (2000). More than a Picture: The Instrumental Quality of the Shadow Puppet. Studies in Southeast Asian Art: Essays in Honor of Stanley J. O’Connor. Stanley J. O’Connor, Nora A. Tayloret al, Eds. Ithaca, N.Y., Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University. Studies on Southeast Asia no. 29: 49-73. [Kat]
• Taylor, Nora (1999). ‘Pho’ Phai and Faux Phais: The Market for Fakes and the Appropriation of a Vietnamese National Symbol. Ethnos. 64(2): 232-248. [Orven]
• Lockard, Craig. (1998). “Thailand.” in Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics in Southeast Asia. Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press. [Jarron]

Thursday, November 19th: Music Party (and (hypo)thesis sharing workshop)

• Before class, please post a link to this google doc of at least 2 of your favorite songs from Southeast Asia (past, present, or future). If you don’t have a favorite song from Southeast Asia, ask a family member, a friend, a lover or even an enemy to suggest some. If you feel inspired, consider picking a song that might work as the “soundtrack” to the paper you are writing for this class.

In class, we will listen to some of the music selections, and also spend some time in small groups discussing your hypothetical thesis statements and tentative outlines for your papers.

**Be Ready to Chat ABout your paper After November Recess**

November Break:  Nov. 21-29

Week 13: Student Project Presentations

For this week, please prepare and practice a presentation of your final research project:

Tuesday, December 1: Discuss Papers

Thursday, December 3: Group B Presentations and Course Conclusion

**FINAL PAPER: due, Friday Dec. 10th**

---

Previous week 10-13 before the revision

Week 10: Development and its Limits: Urbanization and Ecological Crisis

Tuesday, November 3rd: The Challenges of Urbanization and Industrialization

• The Squatter and Bangkok Slum Leader in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Harms, Erik (2012) “Beauty as Control” in American Ethnologist 29(4): 735-750.
• Rigg, Jonathan (1990). Urbanization and Primacy: Bangkok. Southeast Asia: A Region in Transition. London ; Boston, Unwin Hyman: 133-162.

Thursday, November 5th: Ecological and Social Crises of Development

• The Timber Entrepreneur and The Mitigation Expert in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Dove, Michael (1996). Rice-Eating Rubber and People-Eating Governments.Ethnohistory. 43(1): 33-63.
• Ong, Aihwa (1987). “Selections” Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. Albany: State University of New York: 179-221.
  • (Optional) Taylor, Philip (2007). Poor Policies, Wealthy Peasants: Alternative Trajectories of Rural Development in Vietnam. Journal of Vietnamese Studies. 2(2): 3-56.

PART THREE: The Arts of Change

Week 11: Literature and Social Change

For this week, please read:

• Ho Anh Thai (2001). The Goat Meat Special. Old Truths, New Revelations. K. K. Seet and Asean Committee on Culture and Information, Eds. Singapore, Times Books International: 318-326.
• Lapcharoensap, Rattawut (2004). Farangs. Over there: how America sees the world. London, Granta: 189-203.
• Le Minh Khue (2001). The Concrete Village. Old Truths, New Revelations. K. K. Seet and Asean Committee on Culture and Information, Eds. Singapore, Times Books International: 219-228.
• Pe Myint (2001). Parts for Sale. Old Truths, New Revelations. K. K. Seet and Asean Committee on Culture and Information, Eds. Singapore, Times Books International:65-71.
• Pramodya Ananta Toer (1996). My Kampung [Kampungku]. Indonesia. 61(April): 25-32.
• Wong, Cyril (2015 [2005]). The Boy with the Flower the Grew out of His Ass. Singapore, Math Paper Press. [**Note, this copy contains an essay and the story itself. You only have to read the story, but can read the essay if you like**]

Tuesday, November 10th: Is there a Southeast Asian Literature?

Thursday, November 12th: In-class peer review of Final Paper Outlines / Annotated Bibliography

**Annotated Bibliography and Final Paper Outlines Due in Class**

Week 12: Art and Music

For this week, please read:

• Mrázek, Jan (2000). More than a Picture: The Instrumental Quality of the Shadow Puppet. Studies in Southeast Asian Art: Essays in Honor of Stanley J. O’Connor. Stanley J. O’Connor, Nora A. Tayloret al, Eds. Ithaca, N.Y., Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University. Studies on Southeast Asia no. 29: 49-73.
• Taylor, Nora (1999). ‘Pho’ Phai and Faux Phais: The Market for Fakes and the Appropriation of a Vietnamese National Symbol. Ethnos. 64(2): 232-248.
• Lockard, Craig. (1998). “Thailand.” in Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics in Southeast Asia. Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press.

Tuesday, November 17th: Understanding Southeast Asian Music

Thursday, November 19th: Art and Music as Political Statement

**Draft of Final Paper Due After November Recess**

November Break:  Nov. 21-29

Week 13: Student Project Presentations

For this week, please prepare and practice a presentation of your final research project:

Tuesday, December 1: Group A Presentations

Thursday, December 3: Group B Presentations and Course Conclusion

**FINAL PAPER: due, Friday Dec. 10th**