Editors' Note

The present issue of SOJOURN features five research articles bearing on religion, on archaeology and heritage, and on the on-the-ground realities of ASEAN integration. The contributions touching on religion treat extra-regional contacts, official accommodation of beliefs long concealed as unorthodox and the intersection of religious practice and ethnic identity. With great erudition, John Chen examines Chinese Muslims’ interest in Southeast Asia as an important part of the wider Islamic world during the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing on scholarship on materia medica and on the remarkable story of the Chinese Islamic South Seas Delegation’s visit to Malaya, Chen illuminates a clear interest among Chinese Muslims in Islamic lands beyond just those of the Arab Middle East. He understands that interest in “civilizational” terms. Philippe Peycam’s article examines the history and dynamics of the International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding of the Historic Site of Angkor and assesses its negotiation among international, national and local interests as those interests intersect at a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He focuses on the interaction with Cambodian authorities of the representatives of France and Japan, which have co-chaired that committee, and expresses scepticism about the usefulness of the Angkor committee as a model for effective stewardship of World Heritage Sites in other parts of the world. In a second article on Cambodia, Emiko Stock offers a lively and iconoclastic treatment of the Cham rituals of the Imam San Mawlid and the Mamun possession ceremony to interrogate the ethnic categorization that would distinguish Cham from Khmer. Her article makes an important, and extremely enjoyable, contribution to our efforts to rethink conceptions of identity, ethnicity and history in contemporary Southeast Asia.