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"Nation-building Asia Case studies."
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Between “imagined” and “real” nation-building: identities and nationhood in post-Soviet Central Asia
Much of the existing literature on nation-building in Central Asia offers a statist top-down approach which focuses on how the nation and nationhood is “imagined” by political elites. In this special issue the contributors provide an analysis which seeks to explore the process of nation-building in Central Asia by addressing the other side of the state-society relationship. The case studies in this collection examine the “grey zone” between “imagined” and “real” differences between state-led policies and discourses related to nationhood and identity and how they are received by different audiences at different levels (regional, national and international). The authors bring to the fore the contested nature of nation-building in Central Asia as well as focusing on new or less conventional analytical tools for the study of nation-building such as cinema, construction projects and elections. This article provides the introduction to the special issue and lays out the contribution the articles make to the existing literature on nation-building in Central Asia. It also sets out the rationale and aims of the collection.
Journal Article
Crafting a Postcolonial (Inter)national Identity: Malaysian Pewter Company Royal Selangor’s Branding Strategies (1970–1992)
Conventional viewpoints on global branding for design-focused consumer goods presuppose national identities as a given and prerequisite to market expansion, the key examples being Danish design furniture, Swiss watches, and Parisian fashion. Through the case study of Royal Selangor—a Malaysian family firm specializing in manufacturing pewter tableware and gifts—this study analyzes how businesses in former colonies adapt their branding strategies to transitioning ideas on national identities and economic development in the postcolonial era by drawing upon cosmopolitan worldviews of malleable identities and utilizing ties with former colonizers to gain cultural capital domestically and abroad. This study engages with theoretical frameworks of business history, organizational studies, and nationalism to explore how companies in developing countries in Southeast Asia that are also former colonies interact with colonial histories and participate in postcolonial nation-building through branding and entrepreneurship.
Journal Article
Inaugurating the “White Passage”: Art ‘76
Within an art exhibition, the disposition of space is fundamental in experiencing artworks. A study of the exhibition space as discourse enmeshes art within a framework of relationship and processes instead of viewing art as an isolated and autonomous object. This paper features the case study of Art ‘76, the inaugural exhibition of Singapore's first large-scale institution of art, the National Museum Art Gallery (NMAG). The NMAG's opening in 1976 had been much anticipated by artists and the art audience since the 1960s, it was also an important milestone in the National Museum of Singapore's process of modernisation and revitalisation. During Singapore's post-independent period, the National Museum began to redefine itself as a civic museum focussing on Singapore's history and culture, shifting away from its previous incarnation of a research-focused colonial institution, the Raffles Library and Museum. Singapore was not alone in exploring the role of modern art in nation-building, as neighbouring Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand also began to moot for their own institution of modern art around the same period of time. Art ‘76 and the NMAG represent a case of distinct spatial typology that arose out of unique institutional and socio-political dynamic in post-independent Singapore. In analysing the legacy as well as the relationships and contentions that shaped the spatial articulation of Art ‘76, this paper studies existing visual and oral archive, as well as critically evaluating the concepts of space as a subject of historical study.
Journal Article
Coalition challenges in Afghanistan : the politics of alliance
This book examines the experiences of a range of countries in the conflict in Afghanistan, with particular focus on the demands of operating within a diverse coalition of states. After laying out the challenges of the Afghan conflict in terms of objectives, strategy, and mission, case studies of 15 coalition members—each written by a country expert—discuss each country's motivation for joining the coalition and explore the impact of more than 10 years of combat on each country's military, domestic government, and populace.
The book dissects the changes in the coalition over the decade, driven by both external factors—such as the Bonn Conferences of 2001 and 2011, the contiguous Iraq War, and politics and economics at home—and internal factors such as command structures, interoperability, emerging technologies, the surge, the introduction of counterinsurgency doctrine, Green on Blue attacks, escalating civilian casualties, and the impact of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams and NGOs.
In their conclusion, the editors review the commonality and uniqueness evident in the country cases, lay out the lessons learned by NATO, and assess the potential for their application in future alliance warfare in the new global order.
eBook
War and state building in the Middle East
War and State Building in the Middle East addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the authoritarian-regime governments commonly found in the Middle East, particularly among oil-rich countries. In this region, war has interacted with processes of state making in ways that fundamentally differ from the European experience. In short, unlike in Europe, wars do not make states in the Middle East; they destroy them.
According to economic theory, most oil-rich countries are rentier states; that is, they rely upon the extraction of a natural resource to generate revenue and authority for the central government. As a result, there is little reliance upon domestic taxation and a general lack of political accountability and transparency.
By examining how such governments wage war, Rolf Schwarz turns the prevailing wisdom of modern state building on its head. He closely analyzes the real-world experiences of the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Iraq to show how rentierism leads to internal weaknesses when it comes to governing. His comparative approach allows him to demonstrate how varying levels of reliance upon external resource rents are reflected in the structure of the regime.
By highlighting the perils of funding wars through the sale of natural resources, fighting with imported weaponry, and accepting peace settlements negotiated and guaranteed by foreign powers, Schwarz offers provocative insights into post-conflict peace building, state failure, and the potential for democratic rule in the region.
eBook
Restaging the Revolution in Contemporary China: Memory of Politics and Politics of Memory
This article focuses on the adaptation of the Red Classics – a collection of literary and cinematic works depicting the Communist armed struggle produced in the PRC between 1949 and 1966 – for contemporary Chinese television. Using the controversy over the remake of Tracks in the Snowy Forest (Linhai xueyuan 林海雪原) as a case study, it explores the complexity of restaging the Communist revolution in the post-Mao reform era. Competition in the media industry compels TV producers to re-package Communist history for fragmented contemporary audiences – those who are familiar with the original Red Classics as well as those who grew up in the reform era and who are far removed from the revolutionary legacy. Adaptation of the Red Classics is a sensitive issue. By focusing on the sexual desires and individual interests muted in the original Red Classics in order to cater for the tastes of younger viewers, the remakes offer alternative readings of history and have incurred government censorship. Opposition to the adaptations has also come from a distinct mnemonic community, the Red memory group, whose members came of age in either the 1960s or during the Cultural Revolution and who absorbed the Red Classics in their formative years. The interplay of state politics, collective memory and commercial imperatives ultimately makes the repackaging of the revolution for contemporary mass entertainment a multifaceted and highly contentious issue.
Journal Article
Indigenous Participation in Constitutional Development
In 1950 the first four Solomon Islanders were nominated for the Advisory Council. Further constitutional reforms were made between 1960 and 1978, slowly preparing the Protectorate for a transfer of power through a unitary state operating under the Westminster system. British policy was guided by previous colonial experiences in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and to a limited extent by local circumstances, particularly through constitutional review committees. This paper addresses three central questions. Did Solomon Islanders make their own decisions when establishing the structure of their constitution and parliament, or were these decisions made for them by British and other advisers? What attempts were made to include Indigenous political structures in the governing process? To what extent did events elsewhere influence Solomon Islands political development?
Journal Article
Midwife Radio: The Entangled Trajectories of Global Health Programming, Broadcast Media, and the Indonesian State
Shortly after the fall of Indonesia's New Order government, the country's public radio network began limited broadcasts of a program intended to augment the midwifery skills of the biomedically trained \"skilled birthing attendants,\" called bidan. This radio series was focused on educating rural health care providers in an efficient, modern way, reflecting the country's history of Jakarta-centered nation-building through didactic mass media. After what appeared to be relatively promising trials, the national Ministry of Health let the program languish and never brought it to full implementation. This article investigates the bidan radio series as a case study not only in public health education, but as a representation of the country's shifting narratives of nationalist modernity, and the role of mass media in reproducing them. We argue that the program depended on the medium itself as the locus of its message, and therewith national radio's historic discourse of unifying progress. Based on an ethnographic collaboration between medical and media anthropologists, this ethnohistoric research interrogates childbirth as a disputed field of cultural knowledge production, and an exemplar of broadcast media and biomedicai nationalism's entangled trajectories.
Journal Article