Japanese Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
Online ISSN : 2424-1377
Print ISSN : 0563-8682
ISSN-L : 0563-8682
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Volume 43, Issue 1
Displaying 1-7 of 7 articles from this issue
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Articles
  • Activated Local Power Politics in Indonesia and the Birth of a Provincial “Governor-General”:
    Politics in the Banten Area, 1998-2003
    Masaaki Okamoto
    2005 Volume 43 Issue 1 Pages 3-25
    Published: June 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.43.1_3
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Since the meltdown of the authoritarian Suharto regime in May 1998, Indonesia has been undergoing a process of democratization and decentralization. This change is drastic and has drawn worldwide attention from academics as well as international aid agencies. But there has been no in-depth research on new political structures emerging at the local level and new state-society relations. This article tries to fill that gap by taking up the Banten area of Java.
     In Banten, a businessman-cum-leader of a culturally-recognized group of violent men has successfully gained economic and political power. When the Suharto regime collapsed and the state weakened vis-a-vis society, this social actor controlled various business associations through a patron-client network. He then informally assumed the reins of Banten's provincial government by effectively utilizing his own informal coercive resources and maintaining a close network with the police and military. He successfully produced a canny political structure that enabled the constant expansion of his economic and political resources.
     Democratization and decentralization certainly allowed the establishment of various interest groups and organizations and a system that could respond to these interests and distribute resources to them. In Banten, however, democratization and decentralization paradoxically allowed the monopolization of economic and political resources by one strong leader employing violence.
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  • Small Arms, Romance, and Crime and Violence in Post WWII Thai Society
    Chalong Soontravanich
    2005 Volume 43 Issue 1 Pages 26-46
    Published: June 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.43.1_26
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    During World War II and the immediate postwar years, essentially because of the proliferation of modern small arms, law and order in Thai society were increasingly and seriously threatened. The spread of crime and violence in both urban and rural Thai society during the postwar years was phenomenal. This failure of law and order was well evidenced, among others, in the parliamentary debates towards the end of the War and during the postwar years. Such challenge to the state authority, and to the principles of law and order, was also strongly presence in the new, more or less unique, and highly popular postwar Thai literary genre—the “crime and violence” romance. The surge of crime and violence in both urban and rural Thailand during the 1950s became a pretext of the military coup led by Sarit in 1958 which eventually ushered in the infamous “Sarit Regime.”
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  • Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Native Customary Land Tenure in Sarawak
    Dimbab Ngidang
    2005 Volume 43 Issue 1 Pages 47-75
    Published: June 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.43.1_47
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Contrary to commonly accepted principles of civil society and the ideology of self-determination and governance, the socio-cultural and psychological spaces, territory, boundaries, sovereignty, and customary rights to land resources of the indigenous peoples in Sarawak were not self-determined, but were defined during the course of the last century and a half by the Brooke and colonial administrations and by subsequent postcolonial governments. The first two regimes established their dominion and control over the indigenous peoples in Sarawak through autocratic rule and paternalism. In the pretext of protecting native rights to land resources, expatriate administrators deconstructed these rights, which do not owe their existence to statute, and reframed them on the basis of the land laws of their motherland. When customary rights were subjected to formal land codification under the Torrens land registration system, this codification impinged upon the natives' land inheritance system, their livelihood, their cultural identity, human dignity, and right to exist as discrete groups. Compounding effects of this land codification, the coming into existence of legal pluralism, as well as the exercise of administrative convenience in addressing sensitive land issues have become major sources of land conflict between the Dayak community and private developers and loggers in present-day, post-independence Sarawak.
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  • Policy and Politics Related to Thai Occupied Forest Areas in the 1990s:
    Democratization and Persistent Confrontation
    Takayuki Kurashima, Monton Jamroenprucksa
    2005 Volume 43 Issue 1 Pages 76-97
    Published: June 30, 2005
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.43.1_76
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This paper focuses on the policies and politics associated with Thai occupied forest areas, and identifies noteworthy aspects of both as they emerged in the 1990s. Furthermore, we confirm the fundamental principles related to the most notable aspect, in particular, that emerged under democratization in the decade. To identify these noteworthy aspects, we make use of the concept, “territorialization,” and adopt a polyarchical perspective for the purpose of describing policy evolution and political structures, respectively, while modifying both. As well as discussing those stages of “territorialization” that Vandergeest has previously presented in relation to Thai forests, this study describes policy processes that we have termed the deterritorialization and reverse territorialization of forests. With respect to the polyarchical perspective, we have noticed certain changes in the political structure. Thai occupied forest area policy in the 1990s evolved by traversing two conflicting policy directions dynamically. Behind this evolution are the political structures associated with the re-establishment of absolute power by the military and the establishment of a democratic political regime. In addition, it is especially notable that two opposing policy directions emerged within a continuing democratic regime. This suggests that the democratic political regime, in itself, does not necessarily guarantee a particular position in Thai occupied forest area policy, and that occupied forest area politics under a democratic political regime have developed structures of competition and conflict that are consistent with the political regime, in response to policy evolution.
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