Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies最新文献

{"title":"Legal Reforms in Protecting Migrant Workers’ Welfare in Malaysia: Labor Law and Social Security","authors":"Choo Chin Low","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0048","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how Malaysia has sought to improve migrant workers’ welfare through the revision of its labor laws. Migrant workers’ welfare in Malaysia has been hindered by the absence of social security frameworks, outdated labor laws, multiple dependence on labor intermediaries, and employers’ lack of accountability. In 2019, two labor laws were amended based on International Labor Organization standards: the Workers’ Minimum Standard of Housing and Amenities Act (1990) and the Employees’ Social Security Act (1969). The amendments have equalized the statutory protection between national and migrant workers, increased employers’ accountability for their migrant workers’ welfare, and addressed forced labor. With this legal framework, Malaysia’s migration management has been associated with better social security protection for migrant workers, which was previously absent from foreign worker policies. The legal reforms indicate the government’s attempt in solving the tension in Malaysia’s migration management, by ensuring balance between migrants’ welfare, labor market needs, and immigration control. These observations and analysis draw upon legislations, federal government gazettes, Hansard records, official reports of intergovernmental organizations, press statements of civil society actors, online newspapers, and secondary literature.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76222747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social Media, Fake News, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Sketching the Case of Southeast Asia","authors":"H. Dang","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0054","url":null,"abstract":"As a result of lockdowns across Southeast Asia, the use of all types of social media has reached high records in the whole region. Yet, the rapid social media response manifested in the form of an infodemic – an overabundance of false and misleading information. Concurrently, the region has also witnessed a significant rise in various governmental measures targeting social media actors. In the name of combating fake news, various legal enactments, including enhanced censorship and sanctions, have been pursued by Southeast Asian authorities. These, however, are often deemed unjustified and aggressively restricting of freedom of speech and expression, especially at a time when ASEAN member states have gained notoriety for their lack of civil liberties. This article aims to reveal connections between the infodemic and legal responses in Southeast Asia on the basis of a qualitative literature review and content analysis. It looks at the term infodemic along with the proliferation of different forms of fake news in the context of Southeast Asia’s social media use. It also highlights discrepancies between legal responses and the impacts of fake news during the early days of the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83609082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Malaysia-News - eine Facebook-Gruppe: Ein Erfahrungsbericht in Social Media Nutzung","authors":"Gerhard Berka","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0050","url":null,"abstract":"This paper deals with a Facebook-group named Malaysia-News. This group was founded in August 2019 and saw a rapid increase in members, especially in Southeast Asia. The analysis of the development of this group is based on data from Facebook and concerns the expansion of membership and the motivation to join. It shows that membership increased significantly after incisive events took place in Malaysia in early 2020 and that users are primarily looking for trustworthy information.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88256707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social Media in Research on a Marginalized Identity: The Case of Atheism in Indonesia","authors":"Timo Duile","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0049","url":null,"abstract":"Social media have played a major role as a place where one can meet and socialize with like-minded people, and this is especially important for marginalized groups. Atheists depict such a group in Indonesia where public expressions of atheism are punishable. Whereas social media often plays an important role in finding like-minded people, it is also potentially dangerous to reject religion on social media. In this research workshop, I argue that insights into the ways in which atheists use and engage in social media groups are crucial if one wants to know more about atheist ways of life in Indonesia. However, atheist groups are subject to internal fragmentation, as atheism in Indonesia is highly diverse, and, as a researcher, one can find oneself caught up in these internal struggles. Finally, I argue that social media research is an important addition to offline research, since it enables the researcher, especially when dealing with sensitive issues and identities, to directly enter and critically engage with the premises in which such identities are constituted and developed.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90641422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Livelihood and Poverty: The Case of Poor Women in the Rural Areas of Ca Mau Province, Vietnam","authors":"T. Dang","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0047","url":null,"abstract":"Poverty in rural areas remains a major concern for developing countries. In order to improve the lives of poor rural people, it is important to identify the key factors behind their poverty. Over the past two decades, rural development policy and research have focused on livelihood perspectives that help to explain intertwining factors affecting the way rural residents make a living. Yet, critics point out that the livelihood perspective focuses heavily on the livelihoods of households at the micro level and does not recognize the impact of wider socioeconomic contexts in the lives of rural people. The livelihood literature also gives little attention to power relationships, particularly gender issues. This paper seeks to address these knowledge gaps by investigating the livelihoods of poor women in Ca Mau province, a coastal region of Vietnam. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods with questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews, observations, and focus group discussions. Research findings show that women in the area possess poor livelihood capitals, particularly in human capacity and financial capacity. Moreover, some rural development policies are still not accessible, and they do not provide sufficient inputs for farming. The findings presented here uncover the deep interlinkages between livelihood capitals and the impact of the wider socioeconomic contexts on household livelihood activities and outcomes.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91094826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marginalized Minorities in Malaysia? A Case Study of a Demolished Estate Hindu Temple in Penang","authors":"Sue Ann Teo","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0053","url":null,"abstract":"In the literature, Malaysian Indians, as minorities, are marginalized and discriminated against, while their agency is either conspicuously lacking or one-dimensional. As a result, the mainstream discourse concerning Malaysian Indians is discursive and renders them subordinate. I argue that despite the marginalization and discrimination, grassroots Malaysian Indian Hindus are not powerless. With a case study of a demolished estate Hindu temple in Penang, I unpack their agential compliance and lack of confrontation when the state government destroyed their community temple. Their agential responses reflect their diverse political and social experiences as minorities and the myriad ways of interpreting the political rivalry between the ruling federal and opposition-led state government. Analysis of the case study is derived from ethnography and in-depth interviews with the estate Hindus.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86045661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The #MilkTeaAlliance: A New Transnational Pro-Democracy Movement Against Chinese-Centered Globalization?","authors":"W. Schaffar, Praphakorn Wongratanawin","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0052","url":null,"abstract":"In April 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, memes addressing the Thai monarchy in a critical way appeared on Twitter under the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance, which for a couple of days trended worldwide. Initially, the Twitter account of a Thai TV star was attacked by Chinese nationalists. But, different from similar incidents in the past, a new pan-Asian solidarity of Twitter users emerged, fought back the attack, and defeated the Chinese nationalists through highly self-ironic, witty, and political memes. In our article, we will discuss the meme war in its historic, political, and social context. Firstly, we claim that it can count as the inception of a new transnational movement comparable to the globalization-critical movement of the early 2000s, in so far as it targets the present, Chinese-led version of globalization. Secondly, we will challenge the dominant interpretation that the meme war was a confrontation between young Thai, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese pro-democracy activists versus state-sponsored trolls from the People’s Republic of China. Despite all distortions caused by censorship measures from the side of the Chinese government and Twitter, the meme war seemed to have opened a transnational space for debate.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80031344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: Bijl, P., & Chin, G. V. S. (Eds.). (2020). Appropriating Kartini: Colonial, National and Transnational Memories of an Indonesian Icon. : ISEAS. ISBN 978-981-4843-92-8. 198 pages.","authors":"V. I. Yulianto, G. R. L. Simatupang","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0046","url":null,"abstract":"This book dicusses the national, regional, and transnational appropriations of Kartini – a young Javanese woman who lived in Jepara, Central Java, between 1879 and 1904.  She is recognised internationally as an iconic feminist and nationalist Indonesian figure and is, after Anne Frank, the most widely-read and influential, (originally) Dutch-language author worldwide in the 20th and 21st centuries. Since 1911, her letters,  first published in Dutch as “Door duisternis tot licht” (lit. “Through Darkness Into Light”), have been translated into numerous languages including French, Russian, Japanese, Javanese, Sundanese, and Arabic. There are also several versions of Indonesian and English translations. In the 1960s, a republication of the first 1920 English language translation of a selection of her writings was included in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75005509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Transdisciplinarity’: A Framework of Knowledge Production in North-South Partnerships?","authors":"Petra Dannecker, Alexandra Heis","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0044","url":null,"abstract":"This issue of ASEAS brings together different articles reflecting and discussing scientifically, as well as more practically, challenges faced during the implementation of a capacity-building project on transdisciplinarity. The papers are the outcome of a common endeavor that was undertaken between 2016 and 2019 by universities from Southeast Asia and Europe in the context of the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education program funded by the European Union. The project Fostering Multi-lateral Knowledge Networks of Transdisciplinary Studies to Tackle Global Challenges (KNOTS)1 and its implementation process, as well as conflicts, discussions and transformations that occurred during the various capacity-building activities on transdisciplinarity, will be discussed in the papers from different perspectives and with different foci. Taking transdisciplinarity as a departure for capacity-building activities and collaborations in the course of the KNOTS project was a response to trends and challenges in world development requiring new frameworks of knowledge production. All the participating institutes and universities in Vietnam, Thailand, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria saw the necessity to rethink what knowledge is and how research is done. All participating institutes and their members had either social science or humanities backgrounds and were working in interdisciplinary or disciplinary contexts. Some of the participants and the respective institutes were acquainted with the history and the concepts of transdisciplinarity, while others became familiar with transdisciplinarity only during the project. What all share, especially but not exclusively those coming from development studies, is the realization that the gravity and the scope of global transformations and inequalities due to climate change, migration or capitalist development and their interplay require a new “synthesis of knowledge” (Basile & Baud, 2019, p.11). This synthesis of knowledge not only includes various disciplines and non-academic actors and their knowledge, but especially knowledge, approaches, and contributions from scientists from the so-called Global South, as well as experiential knowledge from practitioners and/or marginalized social groups. It is this knowledge that","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80924001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Institutional Prospects and Challenges to Transdisciplinary Approach in the Knowledge Production System of Vietnam: Reflections on a North-South Partnership Project","authors":"Nguyen Minh Doi","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0041","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on neo-institutionalism in policy studies, this paper aims to demonstrate that transdisciplinarity is a new logic that could challenge the existing institutional logic of the knowledge production system in Vietnam. This institutional interplay is examined by analyzing the institutional response, interactions, and choices of stakeholders participating in an EU Erasmus+ Capacity Building Project. The analysis shows that the transdisciplinarity concept can be used as a potential framework for the develop- ment path of the dominant logic characterized by the shift from a traditional statist to a market-oriented model for knowledge production. Nevertheless, there are challenges like power relations in the interplay processes among actors who try to reproduce existing institutional logic and those who support transdisciplinary logic, as well as regarding relevant decision-makers to make institutional choices. The discussion shows that when applying transdisciplinarity, one should consider the motivation and barriers regarding state control, transdisciplinary readiness, hybrid models, funding, and experience.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88186211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}