Thank you, David. 🙂 Happy to see my piece in a broader global context. And glad to have been able to contribute to the debate and to understanding what makes President Duterte so popular. I hope I can find time to write another aspect of his political aesthetics apart from the visual.
Definitely worth reading. While increasing authoritarianism is likely the largest factor in the shrinking space or role for “vibrant” civil societies, the policies and practices of bi-lateral, multi-lateral and private aid agencies certainly deserve closer scrutiny as well, as does the rush by many NGOs to maintain or increase their funding by adopting service-delivery, market-focused, and/or corporate-friendly program approaches.
With this and the interviews in the “Philippines Beyond the cliches” series New Mandala has been spoiling avid affecionados of things Filipino in the last ten days or so. This piece is further proof of how observations of the Philippines can enrich wider comparative research. While Janus Nolasco provides several pertinent insights to enrich the burgeoning literature on President Duterte and the Philippine’s case, he also contributes to the expanding literature on contemporary populism as a worldwide phenomenon. Much of that literature concentrates on the “demand” side of populism while neglecting the “supply” side. To use a phrase applied to Donald Trump: we need to take populist demagogues both literally and seriously.
The concern with cleanliness linked to modernity expressed by Duterte allows him to reconcile a fundamental contradiction, namely that he claims to be “of” the people and their true champion, while at the same time in his action he is totally disdainful of the unwashed masses. However if those masses are cleansed, with the drug dealers, loiterers, etc literally eliminated, then the “washed masses” are reborn as the worthy people. A concern with cleanliness (linked to modernity) can be found in India with Prime Minister Modi and his campaign against public defecating indeed a serious health issue. The problem is that cleansing of a literal nature can be re-channelled as we have seen in India with the rise of Hindu ethno-nationalism, or in Myanmar with the Bamar/Buddhist ethno-nationalist version to cleansing a country of “ethnic vermin”.
Full transparency, my colleagues Christophe Jaffrelot and Elise Massicard at Sciences Po have organized over the last year or so a research group on the “New Demagogues” with a concluding colloquium planned for the end of this year. The purpose is to tease out common traits, as well as differences, between populist political leaders such as Chavez, Duterte, Erdogan, Hun Sen, Mahathir, Modi, Putin, Thaksin, etc.
Firstly thank you to Nicole Curato and New Mandela for launching the series” The Philippines beyond the cliché. The Philippines is very much in the headlines ,not necessarily for the best reasons. For example few weeks ago the British Economist devoted its cover story to four demagogues threatening democracy worldwide: Rodrigo Duterte figured alongside Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin. Given the rise of populism, and the concomitant growth industry in academic research on the subject, the Philippines has now metaphorically joined the World Cup finals as an object of comparative research. Jayeel Cornelio’s interview is very much in this vain, for while he stresses the specific features of the Filipino religious and political experience the global implications of his research are also apparent. Two examples spring to mind. The first concerns the support provided by Evangelicals to such morally depraved individuals as Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte. We have seen how the double tropes of “the ways of the Lord being impenetrable… and the incapacity of mankind to discern God’s will” can be pushed to their limits. It requires a particular kind of theological gymnastics to square personal Christian convictions with support for two such totally ungodly individuals. A second example that Cornelio alludes to both in his interview, but more thoroughly in his important book, is that of young Catholics in the Philippines. In another case, albeit a less dangerous one, of a rather unique form of exegeses they have turned st Paul’s exhortation – “faith without works is dead” – on its head. As long as you do the “works” there is a wide latitude to interpret what the “faith” actually involves.
I didn’t ask for a definitive accounting, just suggested that more information would be useful. I also didn’t ask that the event be covered in its entirety, but rather that the discussion include a wider set of voices than just those few emerging in national mass media reporting. Your own argument incorporates a discussion of multiple voices and perspectives; I’m simply asking for that diversity to be expanded further.
Those suggestions were provoked by the ambitious scope and rather settled nature of the final interpretation offered. We are told in the conclusion that: “With the successful rescue of the young footballers, the central state eventually conquered the wild and harmful periphery, subsuming its power.” This seems like a quite definitive ending to a mere possibility suggested just a bit earlier: “It is almost as if the state-promoted narrative of the rescue operation sought to put an end to the existing myth, and replace it with a conclusion in which the centre is finally able to take over the unruly periphery.”
It seems to me that we don’t have enough evidence to reach these conclusions yet, however. What exactly are the specific signs – in this case – of this conquering, replacement and ending of local narratives and interpretations? Clearly we have evidence of contrasting and even conflicting narratives. But what indicates that one narrative has displaced and subsumed another?
Thus the call for gathering more voices and perspectives, and waiting at least for the immediate drama of the rescue itself to resolve one way or the other before concluding which narrative won the boxing match.
Thanks for this. It is most useful. For a companion reading, my chapter in the edited collection by Eva Hansson & Meredith Weiss may be of some interest. The book is Political Participation in Asia. Defining and Deploying Political Space, London: Routledge, 2018, and my chapter was titled “Politics and Businessification: The Struggle for Civil Society.” Best to find it in a university library as the cost of the book is exorbitant.
This is one of the best overviews of the #foreignaid sector and the reasons why Civil Society Orgnaisations struggle, most notably local ones within developing countries, especially human rights ones and those that advocate for change. There is one serious factor missing – the rise of informal community activism, sometimes as in Cambodia as a reaction to the inability of formal NGOs both international and local to address burning issues, not to mention of course politicians who are most at fault. Sometimes those informal groups are “NGO-ised” becoming formal entities or “partners” to formal NGOs. Many don’t for many reasons. One of these is that to do so makes them an easier target for hostile authorities. Another is it makes them less nimble. Subtle assistance in the form of funds and technical guidance from astute NGOs does help to keep them going, and to keep unsolved issues alive such as the Boueng Kak Lake protest by women whose land and homes were lost by the filling-in of the lake in central Phnom Penh. Because that issue stays alive it also means leader Tep Vanny languishes in jail.
This is probably the immediate future for community activism in a world where major Western donors like US, Australia, and the UK have lost their commitment to promote and protect human rights. What they have also abandoned is the natural desire of people everywhere to better their lives and circumstances. As this paper postulates, we really must find ways of continuing to support and facilitate the world’s poor to help themselves.
“Raniri’s universal history may have been structured in this way in order to show how the Malay-speakers, especially the Acehnese who were his patrons, represented the culmination of Islamic history.”
Acehnese are Malay-speakers?! Acehnese language is Malay?!
Why don’t you guys start stop using “Malay” to refer to languages, and everything related to languages such as Literature, in Sumatera. Our languages and cultures are NOT Malay but Acehnese, Batak, Nias, Mentawai, Minang…
Yes. But the royal Thai navy emblem was embedded on the video footage released to the public, literally putting their stamp on it as some attempt to claim responsibility for saving the boys. That is all that matters to the establishment.
A very interesting article, but I would point out a couple of things (that you, Mr Siani as an anthropologist are probably aware of already!) Firstly, the religion in Thailand is not strictly Buddhist; rather, it is generally said to be a ‘syncretic’ religion, composed of aspects of Buddhism as well as elements of Hinduism and animism. Secondly, the area around Mae Sai and Chiang Rai (and much further south too) cannot strictly be called Thai. In the 19th century the foreign visitors used to call the people of this region the ‘northern Lao’. Then Rama V managed to colonise the region by imposing Thai officials as rulers and managers. Finally in the 1930s the dictator Phibun drew the north further into the central Thai system, most obviously by changing the name of the country from the more inclusive ‘Siam’ to the nationalist ‘Thailand’. And then there are further complications with the wonderful ‘hill tribes’ [chao kow/ in Thai, I think], whose religions and beliefs are unknown to me.
On reflection, this post sounds like a correction, but that is not my intention. I reckon that Mr Siani knows what I have stated above and much more besides, as do others on New Mandala. And probably I am not correct in some of my statements. I am just an amateur who happens to have lived in Lanna for a few years and who has tried to learn what he can.
I don’t think the myth will disappear. I understand that people locally have never given up worshipping the princess, also for a successful outcome of the rescue operation itself. Counternarratives that resist the one analyzed in this article are also emerging. One, for instance, has it that the monk who predicted the day the team would have been found is a reincarnation of the princess’s son.
I think the reason why central Buddhism has been so important politically is that it has legitimized the state as the ultimate vehicle of Buddhadom, portraying its project of centralization as a benevolent, moral and civilizing mission.
I think a blog is about sharing fresh ideas about current events, not definitive accounts, and find that there is value in that. I also think the expectation that any analysis – let alone a blog post – should cover an event in its entirety and account for multiple perspectives is a bit unrealistic.
I am not aware of mediums being allowed to perform rituals at the entrance of the cave, where the narrative I am interested in is being constructed. Would love to know more if you have different information though.
I haven’t seen much on mo du in connection to the cave crisis, have you? My impression is that the media has focused more on predictions made by mediums, which were denigrated by state authorities.
People are now obsessed with monk Phra Khruba Boonchum, who predicted (more or less) correctly the day the team would have been found. He is being pulled into a narrative of resistance, as some claim he is a reincarnation of the princess’s child. He was also photographed in the area holding a portrait of King Bhumibol, which I think he uses to demonstrate his submission to the moral authority of the center. I haven’t found any comment about him from state authorities.
A very sharp and insightful analysis. If politics is about creating and maintaining morality, why do the old power prefer Dhammayut sect to Mahanikai in maintaining their status quo? What kind of moral legitimacy do they want to maintain in the people’s thoughts through the Dhammayut and why?
I was under the impression that Bhumipol did speak out on more than one occasion in his birthday speech, one time calling for an international investigation into the drug deaths.
In the light of these perspectives one can but wonder to what lengths political manipulation can extend but then realize that such power,by its very nature, is always present. That there is a spiritual significance to all nature, whether mountains, caves, rivers, should not be a question of “superstition.” One mans superstition is another man’s holy belief. The world should watch this drama carefully and continue to pray the young people and their teacher are returned to our world safely. Symbolically, their re-emergence might represent a rebirth – for the rescued ones and those awaiting their return – if we watchers on the outside were generous enough to allow the symbolism and learn from it.
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The politics of cleanliness in Duterte’s Philippines
Thank you, David. 🙂 Happy to see my piece in a broader global context. And glad to have been able to contribute to the debate and to understanding what makes President Duterte so popular. I hope I can find time to write another aspect of his political aesthetics apart from the visual.
Wielding the purse strings of Southeast Asian civil society
Definitely worth reading. While increasing authoritarianism is likely the largest factor in the shrinking space or role for “vibrant” civil societies, the policies and practices of bi-lateral, multi-lateral and private aid agencies certainly deserve closer scrutiny as well, as does the rush by many NGOs to maintain or increase their funding by adopting service-delivery, market-focused, and/or corporate-friendly program approaches.
The politics of cleanliness in Duterte’s Philippines
With this and the interviews in the “Philippines Beyond the cliches” series New Mandala has been spoiling avid affecionados of things Filipino in the last ten days or so. This piece is further proof of how observations of the Philippines can enrich wider comparative research. While Janus Nolasco provides several pertinent insights to enrich the burgeoning literature on President Duterte and the Philippine’s case, he also contributes to the expanding literature on contemporary populism as a worldwide phenomenon. Much of that literature concentrates on the “demand” side of populism while neglecting the “supply” side. To use a phrase applied to Donald Trump: we need to take populist demagogues both literally and seriously.
The concern with cleanliness linked to modernity expressed by Duterte allows him to reconcile a fundamental contradiction, namely that he claims to be “of” the people and their true champion, while at the same time in his action he is totally disdainful of the unwashed masses. However if those masses are cleansed, with the drug dealers, loiterers, etc literally eliminated, then the “washed masses” are reborn as the worthy people. A concern with cleanliness (linked to modernity) can be found in India with Prime Minister Modi and his campaign against public defecating indeed a serious health issue. The problem is that cleansing of a literal nature can be re-channelled as we have seen in India with the rise of Hindu ethno-nationalism, or in Myanmar with the Bamar/Buddhist ethno-nationalist version to cleansing a country of “ethnic vermin”.
Full transparency, my colleagues Christophe Jaffrelot and Elise Massicard at Sciences Po have organized over the last year or so a research group on the “New Demagogues” with a concluding colloquium planned for the end of this year. The purpose is to tease out common traits, as well as differences, between populist political leaders such as Chavez, Duterte, Erdogan, Hun Sen, Mahathir, Modi, Putin, Thaksin, etc.
Philippines beyond clichés series 1 #1: Catholic country
Firstly thank you to Nicole Curato and New Mandela for launching the series” The Philippines beyond the cliché. The Philippines is very much in the headlines ,not necessarily for the best reasons. For example few weeks ago the British Economist devoted its cover story to four demagogues threatening democracy worldwide: Rodrigo Duterte figured alongside Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin. Given the rise of populism, and the concomitant growth industry in academic research on the subject, the Philippines has now metaphorically joined the World Cup finals as an object of comparative research. Jayeel Cornelio’s interview is very much in this vain, for while he stresses the specific features of the Filipino religious and political experience the global implications of his research are also apparent. Two examples spring to mind. The first concerns the support provided by Evangelicals to such morally depraved individuals as Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte. We have seen how the double tropes of “the ways of the Lord being impenetrable… and the incapacity of mankind to discern God’s will” can be pushed to their limits. It requires a particular kind of theological gymnastics to square personal Christian convictions with support for two such totally ungodly individuals. A second example that Cornelio alludes to both in his interview, but more thoroughly in his important book, is that of young Catholics in the Philippines. In another case, albeit a less dangerous one, of a rather unique form of exegeses they have turned st Paul’s exhortation – “faith without works is dead” – on its head. As long as you do the “works” there is a wide latitude to interpret what the “faith” actually involves.
The politics of cleanliness in Duterte’s Philippines
[…] VIEW FULL ESSAY IN ‘NEW MANDALA’ […]
Wielding the purse strings of Southeast Asian civil society
Thank you for your suggestion and will try to find the chapter as it seems highly relevant to my argument
Myth and politics in Thailand’s cave rescue operation
I didn’t ask for a definitive accounting, just suggested that more information would be useful. I also didn’t ask that the event be covered in its entirety, but rather that the discussion include a wider set of voices than just those few emerging in national mass media reporting. Your own argument incorporates a discussion of multiple voices and perspectives; I’m simply asking for that diversity to be expanded further.
Those suggestions were provoked by the ambitious scope and rather settled nature of the final interpretation offered. We are told in the conclusion that: “With the successful rescue of the young footballers, the central state eventually conquered the wild and harmful periphery, subsuming its power.” This seems like a quite definitive ending to a mere possibility suggested just a bit earlier: “It is almost as if the state-promoted narrative of the rescue operation sought to put an end to the existing myth, and replace it with a conclusion in which the centre is finally able to take over the unruly periphery.”
It seems to me that we don’t have enough evidence to reach these conclusions yet, however. What exactly are the specific signs – in this case – of this conquering, replacement and ending of local narratives and interpretations? Clearly we have evidence of contrasting and even conflicting narratives. But what indicates that one narrative has displaced and subsumed another?
Thus the call for gathering more voices and perspectives, and waiting at least for the immediate drama of the rescue itself to resolve one way or the other before concluding which narrative won the boxing match.
Flexibility, but not security, in Thailand’s platform economies
Where is The Platform Economy and its Impact on Service Workers: Case Studies from Thailand available?
Wielding the purse strings of Southeast Asian civil society
Thanks for this. It is most useful. For a companion reading, my chapter in the edited collection by Eva Hansson & Meredith Weiss may be of some interest. The book is Political Participation in Asia. Defining and Deploying Political Space, London: Routledge, 2018, and my chapter was titled “Politics and Businessification: The Struggle for Civil Society.” Best to find it in a university library as the cost of the book is exorbitant.
Wielding the purse strings of Southeast Asian civil society
This is one of the best overviews of the #foreignaid sector and the reasons why Civil Society Orgnaisations struggle, most notably local ones within developing countries, especially human rights ones and those that advocate for change. There is one serious factor missing – the rise of informal community activism, sometimes as in Cambodia as a reaction to the inability of formal NGOs both international and local to address burning issues, not to mention of course politicians who are most at fault. Sometimes those informal groups are “NGO-ised” becoming formal entities or “partners” to formal NGOs. Many don’t for many reasons. One of these is that to do so makes them an easier target for hostile authorities. Another is it makes them less nimble. Subtle assistance in the form of funds and technical guidance from astute NGOs does help to keep them going, and to keep unsolved issues alive such as the Boueng Kak Lake protest by women whose land and homes were lost by the filling-in of the lake in central Phnom Penh. Because that issue stays alive it also means leader Tep Vanny languishes in jail.
This is probably the immediate future for community activism in a world where major Western donors like US, Australia, and the UK have lost their commitment to promote and protect human rights. What they have also abandoned is the natural desire of people everywhere to better their lives and circumstances. As this paper postulates, we really must find ways of continuing to support and facilitate the world’s poor to help themselves.
Writing history in the Indian Ocean world
“Raniri’s universal history may have been structured in this way in order to show how the Malay-speakers, especially the Acehnese who were his patrons, represented the culmination of Islamic history.”
Acehnese are Malay-speakers?! Acehnese language is Malay?!
Why don’t you guys start stop using “Malay” to refer to languages, and everything related to languages such as Literature, in Sumatera. Our languages and cultures are NOT Malay but Acehnese, Batak, Nias, Mentawai, Minang…
Myth and politics in Thailand’s cave rescue operation
Yes. But the royal Thai navy emblem was embedded on the video footage released to the public, literally putting their stamp on it as some attempt to claim responsibility for saving the boys. That is all that matters to the establishment.
Myth and politics in Thailand’s cave rescue operation
A very interesting article, but I would point out a couple of things (that you, Mr Siani as an anthropologist are probably aware of already!) Firstly, the religion in Thailand is not strictly Buddhist; rather, it is generally said to be a ‘syncretic’ religion, composed of aspects of Buddhism as well as elements of Hinduism and animism. Secondly, the area around Mae Sai and Chiang Rai (and much further south too) cannot strictly be called Thai. In the 19th century the foreign visitors used to call the people of this region the ‘northern Lao’. Then Rama V managed to colonise the region by imposing Thai officials as rulers and managers. Finally in the 1930s the dictator Phibun drew the north further into the central Thai system, most obviously by changing the name of the country from the more inclusive ‘Siam’ to the nationalist ‘Thailand’. And then there are further complications with the wonderful ‘hill tribes’ [chao kow/ in Thai, I think], whose religions and beliefs are unknown to me.
On reflection, this post sounds like a correction, but that is not my intention. I reckon that Mr Siani knows what I have stated above and much more besides, as do others on New Mandala. And probably I am not correct in some of my statements. I am just an amateur who happens to have lived in Lanna for a few years and who has tried to learn what he can.
Myth and politics in Thailand’s cave rescue operation
Thank you, Dave.
I don’t think the myth will disappear. I understand that people locally have never given up worshipping the princess, also for a successful outcome of the rescue operation itself. Counternarratives that resist the one analyzed in this article are also emerging. One, for instance, has it that the monk who predicted the day the team would have been found is a reincarnation of the princess’s son.
I think the reason why central Buddhism has been so important politically is that it has legitimized the state as the ultimate vehicle of Buddhadom, portraying its project of centralization as a benevolent, moral and civilizing mission.
Myth and politics in Thailand’s cave rescue operation
I think a blog is about sharing fresh ideas about current events, not definitive accounts, and find that there is value in that. I also think the expectation that any analysis – let alone a blog post – should cover an event in its entirety and account for multiple perspectives is a bit unrealistic.
I am not aware of mediums being allowed to perform rituals at the entrance of the cave, where the narrative I am interested in is being constructed. Would love to know more if you have different information though.
Myth and politics in Thailand’s cave rescue operation
I haven’t seen much on mo du in connection to the cave crisis, have you? My impression is that the media has focused more on predictions made by mediums, which were denigrated by state authorities.
People are now obsessed with monk Phra Khruba Boonchum, who predicted (more or less) correctly the day the team would have been found. He is being pulled into a narrative of resistance, as some claim he is a reincarnation of the princess’s child. He was also photographed in the area holding a portrait of King Bhumibol, which I think he uses to demonstrate his submission to the moral authority of the center. I haven’t found any comment about him from state authorities.
What’s behind the “purging” of the Thai sangha?
A very sharp and insightful analysis. If politics is about creating and maintaining morality, why do the old power prefer Dhammayut sect to Mahanikai in maintaining their status quo? What kind of moral legitimacy do they want to maintain in the people’s thoughts through the Dhammayut and why?
Has Rama X revived Thailand’s death penalty?
I was under the impression that Bhumipol did speak out on more than one occasion in his birthday speech, one time calling for an international investigation into the drug deaths.
Myth and politics in Thailand’s cave rescue operation
Thanks for this! It is fascinating!
Myth and politics in Thailand’s cave rescue operation
In the light of these perspectives one can but wonder to what lengths political manipulation can extend but then realize that such power,by its very nature, is always present. That there is a spiritual significance to all nature, whether mountains, caves, rivers, should not be a question of “superstition.” One mans superstition is another man’s holy belief. The world should watch this drama carefully and continue to pray the young people and their teacher are returned to our world safely. Symbolically, their re-emergence might represent a rebirth – for the rescued ones and those awaiting their return – if we watchers on the outside were generous enough to allow the symbolism and learn from it.