In Southeast Asia, instantiations of haunting often disrupt dominant time in ways that force an encounter with the state. This article considers how ghosts disrupt temporality to make new political possibilities. It explores the ways through which ghosts destabilize the linearity of standard time to inscribe heterogenous planes of time that open up to alternative political visions. Through reexamining case studies of haunting in Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, it also considers whether the political possibilities embodied by ghosts are capable of sustaining a political project. This article argues that while ghosts can disrupt time to gesture toward political action, a disruption that contains the potential for new political possibilities, they cannot always fulfill those possibilities. That is, the capacity for disruption always contains the possibility for co-optation. This article suggests, however, that the precarity to haunting is also a precarity proper to hope. Ghosts can suggest that the normal might yet be unsettled.

Paddy-field expansion is a major driver of mangrove deforestation in Myanmar, but it is an unsustainable farming practice due to the abandonment of rice cultivation after some decades. To understand previous and existing paddy-field expansion into mangroves and to plan for sustainable resource use, we studied the process of developing and abandoning paddy fields, and the resulting impacts, in a Mon village in Taninthayi Region. Three conditions were observed: field expansion by local people for subsistence during the period of insurgency, state-imposed field development, and extension of fields with the local authority’s support. Although the sustainability of fields depends on their specific geographic setting, the water action, and reasonable protective mangroves cover, paddy-field abandonment may occur within two to three decades after initial rice cultivation due to frequent embankment breaching. Consequently, the complex and long-term changes to the village’s agroecology and socioeconomic conditions studied included the onset of out-migration and orchard development following paddy-field abandonment. The previous practice of paddy-field expansion without regulation of the coexistence of mangroves and agriculture could not support sustainable resource use and rural development. Therefore, we recommend that revitalization of mangrove paddy fields at a manageable level should go along with follow-up investment and assessment of environmental challenges.

This study discusses how Soeara ‘Aisjijah magazine, the official publication of the Indonesian Muslim women’s organization ‘Aisyiyah, prepared its readers to anticipate the arrival of Japanese occupation forces in 1941–42. From this study it is clear that Soeara ‘Aisjijah did not only contain progressive religious advice for Muslim women, as has been thought so far. The magazine also displayed an awareness of the global political map that changed quickly between 1940 and 1942. This magazine gave its Indonesian Muslim women readers information about the latest events in the international world so that they were aware of what was happening outside Indonesia. In addition, the magazine’s hatred of ruthless Japanese troops led it to prepare readers with various strategies for dealing with the possible arrival of Japanese forces, including calls such as the following: (1) women must be able to keep their safety and honor during wartime; (2) women must participate in defending the nation and the motherland; (3) women must teach their children how to protect themselves from the enemy; (4) men must protect their wives and sisters; and (5) Muslims must always have faith in Allah in the midst of war. This study shows that Indonesian Muslim women had an attitude of resistance against the Japanese even before the Japanese reached Java and that Soeara ‘Aisjijah magazine was dedicated to calling upon Indonesian women to take part in efforts to defend themselves, their families, their nation, and their homeland from foreign enemies in the Southeast Asian theater of World War II.

This paper looks at the economic and welfare conditions of residents in Lake Sebu, a largely rural but natural and cultural resource-rich municipality in Southern Mindanao in the Philippines. Two notions of welfare are used in the study: economic welfare, measured in terms of household income and vulnerability to hunger; and social welfare, measured in terms of self-reported happiness. The study uses primary data collected through a household survey and analyzed with statistical and econometric procedures (tests of difference between sub-populations; and ordinary least squares, binary probit, and ordered logistic regressions). The results suggest mixed implications of abundant natural and cultural resources on the income, livelihood, and happiness of people in Lake Sebu. Nonetheless, insofar as the availability of natural and cultural resources provides more opportunities for income-generating activities, and hence makes possible multiple-income households, abundant resources in Lake Sebu may be considered a blessing and welfare enhancing. Further, the study finds no significant positive relationship between income and happiness and no significant influence of social capital, measured in terms of membership in formal organizations, on welfare (both economic welfare and happiness).

Local ecological knowledge (LEK) originates from people’s experience interacting with ecological systems in their daily lives. LEK therefore encompasses a variety of information on ecological systems and organisms. Knowing the local names of organisms is vital when collecting information from residents and associating a local name with other LEK. The taxonomic name of a biological species follows rules that were developed in the context of conventional natural science, whereas a local name is typically determined by historical and cultural context within a local human community. We aimed to clarify the relationships between local and scientific names of fishes in the middle reaches of the Kampar River, Indonesia. We investigated local names using a questionnaire survey in a fishing village. The villagers spoke a dialect of Malay used in the Kampar River Basin, and the interviewers were born in the area and were able to speak the dialect. We linked 28 local names of fishes to their corresponding scientific names, including three species that may be extirpated species in the local ecological community. More than half of the local names were associated with a scientific name at the genus level or higher. Residents of the settlement closer to the river more often responded with the local names of fishes inhabiting river channels, while those in the settlement farther from the river more frequently responded with the names of fishes that inhabit swamps. Finally, we discuss how information derived from LEK may be useful in ecological conservation even when it is not resolved to the species level.