Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Volume: 310. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018. xi, 214 pp. (Table, B&W photos.) US$126.00, cloth. ISBN 978-90-04-37261-0.
There has been a significant increase in the number of English publications providing a historical review of Southeast Asian development. These publications have enriched the literature with a diversity of foci and fields of discussion. Protschky and van den Berge’s edited volume makes further contributions by providing prospective readers insights into the social-cultural dynamics—with historical context—of modern Southeast Asia, from the 1920s to the 1970s. The contributors to this work focus on how historical actors in different countries in the Southeast Asia region of this period explored and used the notion of modernity. In its nine chapters, this book draws on materials from six countries (Philippines, Malaysia, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia) focusing the discussion on art and cultural-historical issues.
Protschky begins the discussion with the fascinating assertion that this book does not concern itself with periodizing modernity per se, but approaches modernity as a comprehensive concept that has been articulated and reproduced in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the volume’s collected essays explore the discourse of being modern from an extensive variety of angles: from modernity as a way of life to textual representation.
Following Protschky’s compelling overview, in chapter 2, Michael D. Pante explores the notion of modernity as reflected in a colonial-period town planner in the Philippines. In chapter 3, Julian Millie examines “modern times,” in Indonesia through a reformation movement in modernist Islam of the 1930s. While Millie focuses the discussion on how Islamist scholars introduced academic approaches to religious activities, Marieke Bloembergen explains in chapter 4 how Hindu-Buddhists endorsed a pan-Asian movement in Java from the 1920s to the 1970s. The discourse of modernity also emerges in the spheres of art and culture, as discussed by Tom van den Berge and Timothy P. Barnard. In chapter 5, van den Berge examines how art exhibitions by European artists influenced Indonesian artists in the context of expressing their Indonesianness. In chapter 6, Barnard addresses how “modern” women were constructed in 1950s Singaporean cinema through Malay-language films.
In chapter 7, Janit Feangfu and Rachel V. Harrison assert that modern times are reflected through the visual cultural amalgamation of the Thai monarch in the 1930s. In chapter 8, Chie Ikeya explores the works of Burmese author P. Moe Nin, a pioneer writer in his field, and the middle-class reader. To wrap up this fascinating volume, Christina Firpo examines notions of modern times in Vietnam through a look at moral panic over homosexuality among medical and religious institutions.
This book positions modern times as a cultural exploration juxtaposed with an exposition of the experience of modernity. The notion of modern times could be perceived as benefitting a particular class in society, such as elites, religious actors, or visual artists. In a larger context, these Southeast Asian actors acquire their opportunity to discover, to learn about, and then to adopt ideas, perspectives, or scholarship from their Western counterparts. This cultural encounter leads Southeast Asians to experience an intersecting, different principle of life, which can be articulated as a cultural melting pot of colonialism-post colonialism and western-eastern art aesthetics and principles.
Furthermore, notions of modernity can be seen as forming a cultural fusion. Insofar as textual representation, this cultural fusion of modern times is reproduced through aspects of popular culture, such as novels and cinema. Textual representation provides more possibilities for Southeast Asian actors to disseminate modern notions via a specific framing, chosen by the author or creator, such as situating modernity as the freedom to explore the sexual narrative within a conservative society. Also, added to this discussion, cinematic notions of modernity are also reconstructed through the framing of the protagonist within the banal symbol of modernity.
Interestingly, one notion of modern times also emerges as a threat to the established traditional social and moral norms. In the last essay, Christina Firpo utilizes Foucault’s approach to the body as a site of social control and enforcing gender norms, offering a slightly diverse perspective for understanding modern times by discussing how medical and religious authorities in the post-colonial Vietnam regime constructed Eurasian boys into “modern” Frenchmen
The list of essays in this book does not suggest any general overarching hypothesis. However, this book does offer a strong point of view from a specified case of understanding modernity, and could become another gate through which to explore the political context in Southeast Asian countries. For example, further discussion on how a change of regimes might affect or even strengthen the values of modernity in a community. The political context could have also used theorizing in some chapters, to include an examination of how ideological change affects notions of modernity.
Overall, the essays in this book communicate a diverse and complex discourse of modernity within the context of cultural and political shifts in Southeast Asia during the 1920s–1970s. It offers the insight that this transition led Southeast Asian actors into a cultural amalgamation of novelty in terms of ideas and audiences. The changes of regime, at some point, offer a new perspective that leads to social change in general. However, in some cases, it ignites a clash that exposes the acceptance gap regarding new values.
The discussions in the book would prove interesting complementary reading for academics and postgraduate students in the area of Southeast Asian studies and the work would be a valuable resource for an academic library.
Satrya Wibawa
Curtin University, Perth
Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya