The matter of geography does not seem to register in the predominant readings of the works of the nineteenth-century Filipino writer Jose Rizal, most of which privilege a framework built around nationalism. In this article, I consider how the forest as a narrative space and conceptual trope—or “forest thought”—can mediate the way in which history is imagined in Rizal’s novels, Noli me tangere (Touch me not) (1887) and El filibusterismo (The subversion) (1891), mostly by disclosing, unsettling, and ultimately resisting the legibility that state-making and narrative require and engender. In looking at “forest thought” in the novels and the conceptions of history that it reveals, I seek to bring to the surface a disrupting potential in the works: the forest as “excess” of and radical threat from the center, as incubator of an inchoate utopia, and as a site of generative illegibility, which also locates the trauma of colonial conquest in Rizal as a figure of European enlightenment, offering hopefully new ways of thinking about the constellation of space, narrative, state-making, and empire.

In present-day Vietnam, patrilineal kinship groups called dòng họ are widely dispersed. However, from a historical viewpoint, there have been various arguments about the formation and transformation of the Kinh people’s patrilineal kinship groups. In this article, we will introduce the village documents called Viên bộ and examine the family structure and household division around Huế in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From those examinations, this article concludes that the patriarchal image of the patriarch having strong authority in a large family based on polygamy does not apply to rural areas near Huế in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rather, it is supposed that members of the next generation were separated from the patriarchal household one after another. This brought about a loosely knit household group comprising two or three generations based on paternal blood relationships, which was formed with the patrilineal family at the top. When paying attention to the inheritance of ancestral rituals and inheritance of property, it can be said that they were clearly a kind of Confucian patrilineal kinship group. On the other hand, we can also find a point in common with multi-household compounds in the rest of Southeast Asia. It may be necessary to reconsider the family structure of the Kinh people in comparison with Southeast Asia and East Asia from a historical viewpoint.

This article examines the analytical concepts frequently used to describe the complex situations caused by contact between different cultures and proposes a new framework to describe this reality. Although “syncretism” and “hybridity” have traditionally been the focus of argumentation about cultural mixtures, the majority of arguments choose one or the other term and fail to adequately define these words. Consequently, I will examine several terms and words, including these two, and arrange them into a conceptual framework to analyze the various phenomena that arise during cultural contact.

This case study was conducted in Dehong prefecture in Yunnan province, China, where Theravada Buddhism meets Mahayana Buddhism. Surveying over eighty temples, I describe the four types of religious contact and mixtures that have occurred in Dehong, including “syncretism,” “hybridity (in a narrow sense),” “bricolage,” and “separative coexistence.” The key to this classification involves a greater focus on the insider’s subjectivity and an introduction to a continuum between the dichotomy of diversity (hybridity) and unity (syncretism) seen from an observer’s perspective. The framework is set by considering the insiders’, the outsiders’, and the observer’s views. Finally, the causes of diversification will be considered with reference to different conditions, including history, topography, and the balance of political power in the place concerned.

This paper examines the development and situation of cultural productions regarding the Malayan Communist struggle in Malaysia from 2000 onward. The dispute and controversy surrounding the Communist struggle in Malaya were related to the Malayan Communist Party’s position and role in the country’s nation-building in which the regime’s official discourse continued to place the Party as a terrorist organization, though ex-Communists claimed the Party had accelerated the nation’s independence and thus demanded recognition in the country’s nation-building. The UMNO regime implemented selective commemoration of the history and memory of nation-building and hindered publications regarding the Communist struggle. However, the state seemed to be more tolerant of Chinese-language Communist publications as it felt these were less influential among the Malay community. Nevertheless, the state imposed strict censorship on Communist-themed films, and several films providing alternative visions of the Communist struggle were banned outright by the Censorship Board. Thus, film censorship became the repressive state apparatus to cement UMNO’s agenda. Despite heavy political censorship, a new generation of Malaysian cultural workers felt a conscientious need to diversify the nation-building discourse through their cultural creations and participation.

Chiang Mai, Thailand, has long experienced seasonal air pollution episodes at the end of the dry season (February–April). While the severity and length of the episodes vary annually, popular narratives describe how the “haze crisis” is worsening. In this article, we address the role of the media in driving the growing awareness of seasonal air pollution in Chiang Mai. The article contributes to scholarship on the politics of the representation of environmental problems and the understanding of discourses and practices through which natural phenomena are historically produced and become known. It takes into account social relations of power by addressing local environmental politics and how they are framed by political-economic interests. Based on the analysis of three Thai national newspapers over a 25-year period as well as extensive fieldwork and interviews in Chiang Mai Province, we chronicle the development of a collective concern about seasonal air pollution and its political-ecological drivers and consequences. Finally, we demonstrate how this shared perception of a worsening haze crisis is driven by ongoing debates surrounding the use of forests, agro-capitalism, and legitimate forms of political power. This article contributes to emerging scholarship in environmental media studies that addresses how environmental changes become environmental crises.