Patterns of Intergenerational Transfers in Southeast Asia

This article explores motivations for intergenerational exchanges of time and money using data from Indonesia. The extent of exchange and underlying motivations differ across families but substantial evidence supports the theory that transfers within families serve as insurance for family members. The results also suggest that between some parents and children money is exchanged for time. Additionally, some evidence is consistent with the idea that parents pay for their children's education partly as a loan that is later repaid. The authors compare their results to those that they obtained previously for Malaysia using similar data and methods. The findings regarding motivations for transfers are remarkably similar across the two countries.     

Transpeople,Hormones, and Health Risks in Southeast Asia: A Lao Study

ABSTRACT

Cross-sex hormones, while often effective in producing some of the bodily changes desired by transpeople, may also involve harmful side-effect risks, especially when used against contraindications and precautions, and in the wrong dosages. Same-sex hormones blockers (interrupting the person's own sex hormone production) may also have potential side effects. Yet there is evidence from Southeast Asia that transpeople commonly use hormones of both types without any medical supervision, often unaware of the risks at which they put themselves. This report, employing a sample of Lao transwomen, examines the degree to which participants using hormones seek out medical advice regarding their use, as well as examining participants’ knowledge and experience of hormone effects and side effects. The results suggest that as few as one in eight of those using hormones consulted medical professionals about doing so, instead most often relying on friends for advice. Though all who took hormones were aware of the positive effects they were having on their bodies, only half knew of any possible side effects, with only one in ten able to list any of the more serious (potentially life-threatening) effects. Around a half who took hormones had stopped doing so within six years of first taking them, nine out of ten citing unwanted or unhealthy side effects. The implications for transgender health care are discussed.     

Mogong and chieftaincy in western Guangxi and Southeast Asia

This article is devoted to establishing, by means of textual and comparative evidence, a link between the religious practitioners called mogong (Zh. bouxmo) and chiefly houses. The mogong are male priests who recite texts in the ‘local’ language, in this case Zhuang or Bouyei. They are also found among other Tai peoples, including the Dai in Yunnan, the Tày and Nùng in Vietnam, and also among other ethnic groups in mainland Southeast Asia. Theirs is a very ancient tradition, dating back possibly 2000 years. Most of the studies on mogong in the PRC have treated the mogong either as an instance of ‘primitive religion’ or as ‘folk beliefs’, and some scholars have declared that the mogong had no connection with politics or government. My argument, based on new evidence from a survey of Zhuang vernacular texts, is that the Zhuang mogong only became village-level vernacular priests after the disbandment of the native chieftaincies, starting in the early eighteenth century, and that before that they were attached directly to chiefly lineages, as they still were in Yunnan and in Southeast Asia until the 1940s. The mogong were responsible for the most important triennial sacrifices to the guardian spirits of the domain.     

Social media,political expression,and participation in Confucian Asia

This study reviews and analyzes the published empirical research on the role of social media in promoting political expression and participation in Confucian Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. In addition to providing a narrative review of the literature, our analyses show clear numerical estimates of the relationships among different types of social media use (i.e., informational, expressive, relational, and recreational), political expression, and participation in Confucian states. The findings reiterate the importance of the expressive use of social media, showing its moderately strong relationship with participation. The findings also show weak positive relationships with informational and relational uses. We also examine the role of political systems in these relationships and conclude that the strongest relationships are in democratic states, followed by hybrid and authoritarian systems.     

From government to grass-roots reform: the Ford Foundation's population programmes in South Asia, 1959–1981

This article traces the history of Ford's involvement in population work in South Asia from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. The primary focus is on the transition from large-scale technical assistance programmes rooted in government and academe, to work with grass-roots women's groups and community-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In the process, the Foundation also moved from quantitative efforts designed primarily to distribute contraceptives, to a more holistic approach focusing on maternal and child health. The article concludes by relating these trends to a larger shift from a belief in the power of ‘disinterested expertise’ and university-based policymaking that marked the efforts of the major American foundations since the Progressive era, to a new emphasis on ‘self-interested expertise’ and grass-roots social activist and development NGOs that emerged in the 1970s. Changing development paradigms, political trends and a growing disillusionment with large-scale technical assistance all contributed to this transition.     

Navigating communities: race,place, and travel in the history of maritime Southeast Asia

This paper examines intersecting notions of distance, place and community across Insular Southeast Asia for the last several hundred years. The piece is not an attempt to chronicle all these affiliations over time and space, but is rather an effort to re-think how people have moved in Southeast Asian history, who they did this with and why. The essay is divided into three parts. The first section looks at some of the meanings of place in the last five centuries, as place has pertained to communities in ‘centers’ and maritime ‘peripheries’, as well as in several supposedly discrete arenas. The second section focuses on people, and how different communities in Southeast Asia have envisioned the terms and conditions of movement in divergent ways. The last third of the paper concentrates on period, or how conceptions of community, distance and travel have changed over time. It is hoped that this essay will show how all three of these variables – people, place, and periodization – have intersected in specific, complicated ways in shaping local notions of ‘community’.     

Track three diplomacy and human rights in Southeast Asia: the Asia Pacific Coalition for East Timor

Transnational networks of non‐government organizations are increasingly becoming a fixture in international relations, particularly their contribution to traditional notions of diplomacy and its objectives. Less noticed, however, is the involvement of transnational NGO networks in alternative channels for diplomatic exchange, which have been referred to as ‘track three diplomacy’. Described as a form of civil society that transcends borders and nationalities, track three networks and activities involve NGO networks that are movement based, and concerned primarily with raising public consciousness over issues. While their direct influence on formal processes of foreign policy‐making has been limited, they have contributed to expanding both the scope of debate in international relations and the breadth of participation in those debates. Track three networks provide a forum for those communities marginalized by an international system that gives primacy of place to states and their officially‐declared concerns. Their impact is limited, however, by their lack of institutionalization and their reluctance to cooperate with government agencies – an issue that goes towards both their effectiveness and their identity in the long‐term.     

Social Security in Asia and the Pacific

Abstract

In terms of numbers of people, the global challenges facing social security systems are largely Asian. Because of rapid population aging in Asia, while it accounted for 28% of the world's population aged 60 and older in 1985, that percentage will more than double to 58% in 2050. Provident funds are a prominent feature of retirement income systems in the region-Asia and the Pacific contain the majority of the world's countries with provident funds. These programs typically provide lump-sum benefits, and thus, do not provide annuity protection against outliving one's resources. Because of the influence of Confucian philosophy with its emphasis on family responsibility for elders, countries in the region have been relatively slow in developing social security programs. China does not have a social security program for workers who do not work for the government or in government-owned enterprises.