Panels & Abstracts 16-18 SEPTEMBER 2016 SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ASEASUK Conference 2016 Disclaimer: Panel and abstract details are current as of 9 September 2016. While every effort has been made to ensure the completeness of this information and to verify details provided, ASEASUK, SOAS, and the organisers of this conference accept no responsibility for incorrect or incomplete information. Additional updated versions of this book of abstracts will be made until mid-August 2016 at which time a final hard copy will be printed for distribution at the conference. Organizing Committee Professor Michael W. Charney (SOAS), Committee Chair Professor Ashley Thompson (SOAS) Professor Matthew Cohen (Royal Holloway) Professor Carol Tan (SOAS) Dr. Ben Murtagh (SOAS) Dr. Angela Chiu (SOAS) Ms. Jane Savory (SOAS) SOAS Conference Office Support Mr. Thomas Abbs Ms. Yasmin Jayesimi Acknowledgments The Organizing Committee would like to thank the following people for special assistance in planning this conference: Dr. Tilman Frasch (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr. Laura Noszlopy (Royal Holloway), Dr. Carmencita Palermo (University of Naples “L'Orientale”), Dr. Nick Gray (SOAS), Dr. Atsuko Naono (Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford), Dr. Li Yi (SOAS), Dr. Thomas Richard Bruce, and the many others who lent assistance in various ways. © 2016 ASEASUK and the SOAS, the University of London 1 Contents PANEL 1 The Political Economy of Inclusion: Current Reform Challenges in Indonesia 3 PANEL 2 Contentious Politics: Southeast Asia in Times of Polarization 6 PANEL 3 Religion and the State in Southeast Asia: New Issues and Approaches 14 PANEL 4 Southeast Asia Political and Economic Change 21 PANEL 5 Forging and Forgiving: Identity, Community, and Heritage in Southeast Asia 26 PANEL 6 Myanmar: The Historical Problems of National Development and Integration 28 PANEL 7 The Unexpected Role of Southeast Asian Armies Abroad, 1910s to 1990s 30 PANEL 8 Land and Maritime Border Disputes in Southeast Asia 38 PANEL 9 (Im)mobility in Motion Cultural Constraints and Social Stasis in a Region of Mass Migration 41 PANEL 10 Transformation in Burma/Myanmar: Economic, Social and Spatial Changes 44 PANEL 11 Politics, Identity and Minority Groups in Multicultural Society 48 PANEL 12 Mass Media, Politics and Social Change in Southeast Asia 53 PANEL 13 Innovations in Multi-Level Governance and Delivering Improved Societal Outcomes in Indonesia 57 PANEL 14 The Instrumentalisation of Cultural Heritage in Southeast Asia 61 PANEL 15 The Politics of Tastes in Southeast Asian Cinema 68 PANEL 17 Women in Southeast Asia’s Economy, Politics, and Society 72 PANEL 18 New Research on the Economic History of Southeast Asia 75 PANEL 19 Shadow Puppet Theatres of Southeast Asia 81 PANEL 20 South East Asian Manuscript Studies 91 PANEL 21 Discovery, Purchase and Plunder: European Collecting in South East Asia 101 PANEL 23 A New Cold War History from Southeast Asian Perspectives 107 PANEL 24 Religion, Peace, and Security in Southeast Asia 111 PANEL 25 The Tai of the Shan States and the Shan Diaspora 114 PANEL 26 Curating Southeast Asia 117 PANEL 27 Migrants in Southeast Asian Societies 123 PANEL 28 The (Post)colonial Archive: Re-imag(in)ing Southeast Asia 125 PANEL 29 Public History and Popular Memory in Southeast Asia 129 PANEL 30 Education, Diversity and Development in Contemporary Indonesia 135 PANEL 31 Intersections of Religion and Ethnicity in South East Asia 139 PANEL 32 Children, Families, and Mobility in Southeast Asia 142 PANEL 33 The Bigger Picture: Contemporary Art and Intermediality in Southeast Asia 148 PANEL 34 Education in Southeast Asia 152 PANEL 35 Border Governing and the Landscapes of Motions along Thailand-Myanmar Frontiers 154 PANEL 36 Thailand after the Referendum 157 PANEL 37 Inside and Outside the Archipelago: Negotiating Political Relationships in Indonesia 158 PANEL 38 Managing People and Resources in Modern Indonesia 161 PANEL 39 Southeast Asian Identity and History in Film and Dance 166 PANEL 40 Southeast Asian Elite Photographies 169 PANEL 41 Emerging Trends in Southeast Asian Literatures and Screen Cultures 172 PANEL 42 New Constellations, New Spaces for Action: Social and Labour Movements in Southeast Asia 179 PANEL 43 The Popular Traditional Music in Malaysia 184 EUROSEAS 2017 (Oxford) Conference Announcement 187 2 PANEL 1 The Political Economy of Inclusion: Current Reform Challenges in Indonesia Achieving inclusivity for the whole population by sharing the benefits of modernization, is a key economic and political challenge in contemporary Indonesia. It requires sustaining a path of economic growth that reaches vulnerable and marginal groups while, at the same time, protecting and managing a young legacy of decentralization and direct democratic participation. This happens in a context of widespread informality, a growing lower-middle class, budget constraints, a slowing economy and unequal regional capacity. This panel addresses key challenges related to Indonesia’s quest for inclusive growth and participatory governance. It delivers an update and assessment of poverty and inequality estimates, and the current administration’s social policy agenda. Further, it considers the impacts of decentralization on welfare, examines questions of access to social policy provision and explores Indonesia’s recent struggle with defending direct local elections. Panel Chairs: Andy Sumner and Lukas Schlogl (King’s College London) Trends in Poverty and Income Distribution: the Suharto Era and Beyond Anne Booth (SOAS, the University of London) How Inclusive Has Growth Been in Indonesia? Arief Yusuf (Universitas Padjadjaran) and Andy Sumner (King’s College London) Is Indonesia Going Through an Inclusive or Illusional Structural Transformation? Andy Sumner, Kyunghoon Kim (King’s College London) Arief Yusuf (Universitas Padjadjaran) Decentralisation and Distribution: A Multi-dimensional Taxonomy of Indonesian Districts Dharendra Wardhana (King’s College London) How do New Middle Classes Respond to Fuel Subsidy Reform? Evidence from the Indonesian Social Media Sphere Lukas Schlogl (King’s College London) Abstracts Trends in Poverty and Income Distribution: the Suharto Era and Beyond Anne Booth (SOAS, the University of London) In the mid-1960s, the available evidence shows that poverty and malnutrition were widespread in Indonesia, although the Sukarno government appeared to be in denial 3 about the magnitude of the problem. To the extent that the government had any solution to the problem in Java/Bali/Lombok of "too many people and not enough land" it was to move people from Java to the supposedly empty lands in Sumatra, Kalimantan and parts of Eastern Indonesia. When Suharto assumed power, successive development plans also placed emphasis on transmigration, as well as on improving yields in Java, and creating more jobs in non-agricultural sectors of the economy. Although there were debates about the extent to which these policies really were helping the poor in the years from 1966 to 1976, by the latter part of the 1970s, the evidence did suggest that poverty was declining, at least in the sense that numbers living below the official poverty line were falling. But in the 1980s and 1990s, debates about the way poverty was measured and the numbers in poverty intensified, even before the severe growth collapse in 1998. This paper reviews these debates, and also examines the more recent evidence on poverty in Indonesia as measured by the Indonesian government, and by international agencies including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Two key issues are discussed: the way in which poverty lines are set, and the reliability of the survey data on which the estimates are based. How Inclusive Has Growth Been in Indonesia? Arief Yusuf (Universitas Padjadjaran) and Andy Sumner (King’s College London) In this paper we consider different approaches to assessing inclusive growth in Indonesia from 1994 to the present day. We discuss the growth incidence curve, changes in the poverty headcount by the national monetary/consumption poverty line, and changes in inequality indicators. We then develop a measure of inclusive growth based on multidimensional poverty that expands the lens to include not only education, health and household assets, but employment too. We discuss trends in Indonesia across the three approaches for each administration and provide a baseline for assessing the new administration. We note that the reduction of poverty by the national poverty line is matched by the impressive reduction in education and health poverty and expansion of household assets. However, some basic problems remain in terms of school completion and vaccination coverage and progress on employment related poverty in our assessment of inclusive growth is minimal in the last decade. We argue the use of multidimensional poverty to assess the inclusivity of growth draws attention to the successes of administrations in providing public goods and also the enormous remaining challenge of providing sufficient employment opportunities. Is Indonesia Going Through an Inclusive or Illusional Structural Transformation? Andy Sumner, Kyunghoon Kim (King’s College London) Arief Yusuf (Universitas Padjadjaran) The Indonesian economy’s future relies on successful structural transformation. Externally, prices of natural commodities, which have been Indonesia’s major export goods, began to decline rapidly from 2014 and internally, the Jokowi