Syllabus Fall 2018 (Yale-NUS)

2018 Semester 1	Professor Erik Harms
Course Meetings: Tue, Fri 9:00 pm – 10:30 pm	Office Hours: Tuesday, 2:30-5pm
Location: CR2	Department of Anthropology 10 Sachem Street erik.harms@yale.edu

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 / Map Annotations	10 X 5 = 50
All Semester	Classroom Participation and Preparation	100
Tues, 4 September	Map Quiz	50
Fri, 21 September	Ripped from the Headlines Paper	100
Tues, 20 November	Final Project Presentation	50
Fri, 30 November Sunday, 2 December	Final Research Paper	200
Mon, 10 December	Extra Credit: Upload paper to course blog	20

 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.  (Note: Readings marked with a hollow bullet point, “○”, are optional).
• 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):

• Barker, Joshua, Erik Harms, and Johan Lindquist (2012). Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 978-0-8248-3741-9
• Mills, Mary Beth (1999). Thai Women in the Global Labor Force: Consuming Desires, Contested Selves. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ISBN: 0-1835-2654-X
• 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 Google Earth, at (using a chrome browser):

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

COURSE SCHEDULE

INTRODUCTION

Week 1: Course Introduction: Encountering Southeast Asia

Tuesday, 14 August: Introduction to the class.

Friday, 17 August: TBD (Class Blogging exercise)

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

Week 2: Geography and the Human Landscape

Tuesday, 21 August: Rainy Season / Dry Season, Land / Water, Islands / Mainlands

• Osborne, Milton (2004). What is Southeast Asia? Southeast Asia: An Introductory History. St. Leonards, NSW, Australia, Allen & Unwin: 1-17.
• Rigg, Jonathan (1990). Southeast Asia: Physical and Historical Threads. Southeast Asia: A Region in Transition. London ; Boston, Unwin Hyman: 1-18.

Friday, 24 August: Upland / Lowland, Rural / Urban

• “Cham H’Roi Girl” (Vietnam), and “H’Mong Thai School-Girl” (Thailand) in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
• Anderson, Benedict (1996). Census, Map, Museum. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York, Verso: 163-185.
• 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, 28 August: Linguistic Diversity and Socio-Linguistic Relationships

• The Beauty Contestant (Philippines) 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.
• 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.
• Hsieh, Jessica. (2011). Speak Good English Lah!: Prescriptive language policy in Singapore. New Haven, Student Final Paper Modern Southeast Asia, Yale University:1-14.

Friday, 31 August: The Politics of Ethnic Diversity

• The Chinese Mestizo (Philippines) and The Malay Gangster (Singapore) 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.
• Ong, A. (2006). A Biocartography: Maids, Neoslavery, and NGOs. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC, Duke University Press: 195-217.
• Suryadinata, Leo (2007). Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia: Problems and Prospects.Understanding the Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies: 11-28.

Week 4: Kinship, Family and Gender

Tuesday, 4 September: Kinship, the Family, and Identity

• Janowski, Monica (2007). Introduction: Feeding the Right Food: The Flow of Life and the Construction of Kinship in Southeast Asia. Kinship and food in South East Asia. Monica Janowski and Fiona Kerlogue, Ed. Copenhagen, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies: 1-23.
• 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**

Friday, 7 September: Gender

• Miss Beer Lao (Laos) and The Single Woman (Thailand) 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

Week 5: Religion and Cosmology

Tuesday, 11 September: 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.

Friday, 14 September: Buddhism, Confucianism, and the World of the Spirits

• The Buddhist Ascetic (Cambodia) and The Spirit Medium (Thailand) 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.
• Cadière, L. M. (1989). Religious Beliefs and Practices of the Vietnamese. Clayton, Vic., Australia: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University.

Film: Love Man Love Woman

Week 6: Political Systems

Tuesday, 18 September: Political Developments in Post-Colonial and Post-War SEA

• The National Leader (Malaysia) and The Government Official (Cambodia) 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.

**Syllabus change: We will conduct in-class discussion of student investigations into Southeast Asian media and current events.**

Friday, 21 September: “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.
  • (Optional) Kim Dae Jung (1994). Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values.Foreign Affairs. 73(6): 189-194.
• Chua Beng Huat (2017) “Introduction,” Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Kelly, David (1998). Freedom – A Eurasian Mosaic. Asian Freedoms: The Idea of Freedom in East and Southeast Asia. David Kelly and Anthony Reid, Ed. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

**ASSIGNMENT 2: Ripped from the Headlines, due on course website by 5pm, Friday 21 September.**

 

RECESS WEEK: Saturday 22 September – Sunday 30 September

 

PART TWO: Political Economy and Conflicting Experiences of Modernity

Week 7: Modern Dreams and the Dark Side of Modernity

Tuesday, 2 October: The Cambodian Genocide and Other Modern Nightmares

• McCoy, Alfred. W. (1972). Flowers of Evil: The CIA and The Heroin Trade. Harper’s Magazine: 47-53.
• 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.

Friday, 5 October: The Cambodian Genocide and Other Modern Nightmares

• Burma in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung. (2011). “The Politics of Everyday Life in Twenty-First Century Myanmar.” Journal of Asian Studies 70(3): 641-656.

Film: New Year Baby

**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

For this week, please read:

• Scott, James C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Tuesday, 9 October: What Counts as Resistance? Southeast Asian Agricultural Diversity and Agricultural capitalism

• Read Preface. Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3 & Ch 4

Friday, 12 October: Debates about Hegemony, Thesis Writing Workshop

• Read Ch 7 & Ch 8

**Final Paper Proposal Due. Note. We will share and workshop these proposals in class**

Week 9: Migration and Mobility

For this week, please read:

• The Bangladeshi Worker (Singapore) and the Aspiring Overseas Student (Vietnam) in Barker, Harms & Lindquist (2012) Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity.
• Mills, Mary Beth (1999). Thai Women in the Global Labor Force: Consuming Desires, Contested Selves. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Tuesday, 16 October: Migration and Mobility

Friday, 19 October: Migration and Mobility 2

Film: B.A.T.A.M.

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

Tuesday, 23 October: The Challenges of Urbanization and Industrialization

• The Squatter (Malaysia) and Bangkok Slum Leader (Thailand) 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.
• Rigg, Jonathan (1997). Marginal People and Marginal Lives. Southeast Asia: The Human Landscape of Modernization and Development, Routledge: 69-151.

Friday, 26 October: Ecological and Social Crises of Development

• The Timber Entrepreneur (Malaysia) and The Mitigation Expert (Laos) 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. (Note, there are 3 chapters here. You can get be only reading chapter 9)
• 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.
• Somsouk Souksavath (2001). The New God? Old Truths, New Revelations. K. K. Seet and Asean Committee on Culture and Information, Eds. Singapore, Times Books International: 257-259.
• Tan Hwee Hwee (2001). Mid-Autumn. Old Truths, New Revelations. K. K. Seet and Asean Committee on Culture and Information, Eds. Singapore, Times Books International: 295-305.
• 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, 30 October: Is there a Southeast Asian Literature?

Friday, 2 November: 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, 6 November: Understanding Southeast Asian Music

Friday, 9 November: Art and Music as Political Statement

Week 13: Preparation for Student Project Presentations

During this week, professor Harms will be away at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Jose, CA. (He is the president of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, so isn’t allowed to skip the meeting this year).

Students are encouraged to use course meeting times on 13 and 16 November to work on final research project presentations, to be presented at the mini-conference the next week.

Week 14: [Week 13 Make-up]. Mini Conference as Course Conclusion

On a date to be determined, but most likely Tuesday, Nov. 20th, the course will convene as a half-day mini-conference in which students will give short, ten-minute presentations on their final paper topics. Following the presentations, Professor Harms will be available to discuss the papers with students either individually or in groups.

Week 14: [Week 13 Make-up]. Course Conclusion

On Tuesday, Nov. 20th, from noon to 2pm, the course will convene to discuss students’ thesis statement for their final paper topics. We will also discuss the larger themes of the course. Following the presentations, Professor Harms will be available to discuss the papers with students either individually or in groups.

**FINAL PAPER: due, Friday November 30th** New Due Date: Sunday, December 2nd 

**Extra Credit: Uploaded revised paper to course blog by Monday 10 December**