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Southeast Asia Inside Out
Frolll Nations to Constellations
The Frank H. Golay Lecture Cornell Southeast Asia Program March 25
2003
by Aihwa Ong professor of anthropology and chair of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies
University of California at Berkeley
OPENING NATIONS
AN
D NATIONAL
C
UL
TURE
n my lifetime, the post
World War era was
an
ear
lier era of
soc
ial upheaval
the rise
of
America as a
global power, the
processes
of
decolonization around
the world, and the perceived
communist threat to the so-called free
world.
There
was a breakdown of the old
division of labor in the
social
sciences . At
Columbia University in the
1970s
an
era
dominated by the Vietnam
War),
new
fields
such as
peasant studies
and
the new
nations project raised a set
of
questions
about the big changes transforming soci
ety
and
human
progress
. As a student, I
learned that a certain set
of
tools seemed
appropriate, which defined a specific
interdisciplinary mix. On the one hand,
there was the macro, unilinear approach
that viewed modernization
as
a
series
of
stages to
economic growth. This modern
ization trajectory
was contested by the
dependency school that argued for a dif
ferent First World-Third World structural
ization.
On
the other hand, social
historians such
as
Barrington Moore and
E
PThompson influenced our attempts to
grapple with industrial capitalism
and its
impact on cultural formation and political
futures in late-developing countries.
In 1963, Clifford Geertz, an anthropol
ogist influenced by William
W.
Rostow
and
Samuel Huntington, published Agri-
cultural Involution
which became
an
instant
classic. The
book compares the
Japanese and Indonesian paths toward
development. My undergraduate
thesis,
Beyond Involution 1974), showed
an
attraction to Geertz's grappling with the
big questions of
social
change, but also
made an initial criticism of their reduction
to
an issue
of cultural involution. At
Columbia, anthropology was dominated
by the work of Eric Wolf- a Marxian con
cern with emerging class structures devel
oping out of encounters between colonial
capitalism and pre-industrial societies.
Within a macro-micro framing, we were
taught a problem-driven approach to
explore the critique of capitalism in peas
ant and proletarian struggles and, per
haps
as
well, to find evidence for their
resolution
in
alternative futures not dom
inated
by
Western capitalism.
Let me situate that moment, in the
mid-1970s,
when our dominant frame
works for studying modernization relied
on the nation-state and national culture .
As we know,
area
studies
in
the United
States arose
in the aftermath
of
the
second World War. Area specialization
was soon linked
to
the project for the
comparative study of new nations, as
policy interests
stressed
the need for
expertise on particular countries in the
era
of
the Cold
War.
It was a world that
required specialization in the languages,
cultures,
and
histories of world regions. It
seemed
natural
to
use
the nation-state
as
a unit of analysis,
as
scholars specialized in
national histories of anti-colonial strug
gles, the rise of nationalism, and the forg
ing of postcolonial nations
and
identity
e .g. Anderson 1972; Roff 1972).
In the following
decades
, a bipolar
scheme dominated Southeast Asian Stud
ies: regional commonalities
and
contrasts
on
the one hand
and
distinctive national
cultures on the other. Scholars tried to
paint their canvass within the geopolitical
boundaries established by military strate
gies . I remember Joel Steinberg's volume
[1987].
In Search
of
Southeas t Asia
itself a
telling title.) A back page bore a group
photograph of leading scholars pointing
to a post-World War II map of the region.
Geographers articulated the unity-in
diversity quality of topography, climate,
and ecosystems. Historians described
lands below the winds
shaped
by trade
and
tribute, labor bondage and relig i
ous
spheres van Leur
1955;
Reid 1988). Oth
ers, including anthropologists, claimed
distinctive features said
to
characterize
the entire region: the state, negara
patronage systems, ethnic passing, debt
bondage, slave-raiding, wet-rice village
organization, syncretic religious forms,
and gender complementarity. This riot
of
features apparently set the region off
from the Chinese and Indian continents,
which were assumed to be somehow less
in flux, unstable, loosely-structured,
hybrid, or heterogeneous.
This
tension
between the stabilized framework
of
the
postcolonial nation-state
on
the one hand
and the interconnectedness
of
peoples,
social form,
and
geography
on
the other
came
to
be mediated by a particular con
cept of culture.
By the
1970s,
Geertz had turned
res
olutely from the study of economic devel
opment
to
an articulation of culture
that linked together a language, a
sym
bolic system, a cultural tradition,
an
ethnic
and
often
racial
heritage, a material envi
ronment, and a connection to a territory.
Culture also identified a source
of
human dignity, defined
by
being at
home in this milieu of shared values,
practices, meanings, and traditions.
Increasingly,
scholars
turned
to
the cul
ture concept-particularly the emphasis
on language,
on
mean ings,
on
existential
states, on capturing the thickness of
experience (Geertz 1973)-as a way
to
study what is distinctive about the
human. Even in cases when the focus
shifted to modern institutions them
selves-Geertz's treatment of the firm in
Peddlers and Princes 1960)
and
of the
state in
Negara
1980)
for
example-it
was done through the mobilization
of
culture to understand modern forms.
Nevertheless,
there have been substantial
changes in the concept of culture over the
last
thirty years . An internalist critique,
summarized in Anthropology as Cultural
Critique
Marcus
and
Fischer 1989)
and
in
Writing
Culture
(Clifford and Marcus
1986),
raised
questions about the instabil
ity of cultural forms
in
a world of
acceler
ated change. Critics proposed greater
analytical attention to multivocality
and
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i
>
regionalism (echoing perhaps the claims
of
Asian politicians) views Southeast Asia
variously as a region
of
Islamic renais
sance, of
Confucian capitalism, and
of
the
Chinese
periphery. But the understand
able desire to hold on to regional expert
ise has become a barrier
to
more complex
theoretical formulations.
In
other words,
scholars have followed the lead of spatial
categories given
by
the entrenched divi
sion
of area
knowledge,
by
politicians,
and the news media. But these geograph
ical
spaces are
not always the most appro
priate for evaluating emerging social
phenomena and their effects on human
beings and society.
Transnationalism
There is another scholarly response to
globalization that emerged out
of
the
study
of
capitalism and its inscription
of
power in
spaces
not defined by the
nation-state.
The
dominant role
of
South
east
Asian ethnic
Chinese in
transnational
business
activities and their re-engage
ment with China suggested a problem
space
of
networks and constellations.
In
Ungrounded
Empires
Donald Nonini and I
and displacement. However, claims
by
globalists about the decline of
the
nation-state
and
culturalist explanations
of
transnational behavior are seldom
grounded
in
actual research. My book
Flexible Citizenship
1999) is
an
attempt
to
produce
an
ethnography
of
transna
tional practices and linkages. My claim
is
that, in
an
era
of
globalization, individu
als
and governments develop a flexible
notion
of
citizenship in their strategies
devised
for
accumulating capital and
power. I examine in particular how the
flexible practices
of
overseas Chinese
respond fluidly and opportunistically to
changing political-economic conditions.
This
focus on flexible strategies
of
accu
mulation shows
that
mobile managers
and professionals
seek
both
to
circum
vent and benefit from different nation
state regimes
by
selecting diverse
sites
for
investment, work, and family relocation
(Ong
1999, 112)
.
Overseas Chinese
come
to
embody the neoliberal homo
econom
i us figure, I argue, but there may not be
anything uniquely
Chinese
about flexible
personal discipline, disposition and orien-
Soc
iop
olit
ic
al Spaces
Today, there is this shared
sense of
momentous realities, and yet the views
represented here deal not with overarch
ing structures nor do they investigate
social change simply within the structural
space
or the cultural frame.
The
goal
is to
consider globalization
not
merely
as
a
shift in the unit of analysis or as the inten
sification
of
flows
of
capital, people,
rational forms, practices, or values.
The
global is all these things, but
my
approach
raises a different set
of
questions. The
point
is to
go beyond the "new
con
tainer models
of
studying globalization
to
an
explicit articulation
of
a new kind of
problem-space or emerging problem
spaces,
within which we confront ques
tions about structural changes and how
they
shape
new
social
forms and
even
new meanings
of
being human.
So,
how
can we rethink the problem-space beyond
given global, national, and cultural units
of analysis?
For
Southeast Asianists, the unit
of
analysis
seems to
have been given
by
the
scholarship on distinctive political forms
in
the region. Oliver Wolters
1982) proposed a man
brought together interdis
ciplinary
analyses of
ethnic
Chinese flows and the
forms
of
transnational
sub
jectivity shaped by tech
nologies
of
ruling,
circumvention, and net
working practices cond i
tioned
by
the conjunction
of
colonialism and capital
ism
in
the Asia Pacific Ong
In short
the fundamental
problems of
moder-
nity where
mobile
technological and
social
forms
constitute modern
human
beings
sug-
gest that area specialists must consider
spatial
practices beyond those
given
by
political
geography or national culture.
dala model rooted
in
cos-
mological beliefs about
divine kingship and center
periphery power relations.
Stanley Tambiah's concept
of
galactic polity 1976)
was based
more firmly
on
actual
tributary
relation-
ships between central
polity and dependent
satel
lite principalities. Whatever
one may think about the
galactic ideal-type today,
it
and Nonini 1997). This
volume, among others,
has
influenced East
Asian
Studies
to
abandon
gradually the notion that the
Chinese
diaspora
is
a residual phenomenon sepa
rable from
China
proper.
For
instance, a
new h storica I study that traces its u
nex
pected circuits and cultural complexity
is
Adam McKeown's
Chinese
igrant
Net
works
and
Cultural Change: Peru
Chicago Hawaii 7900-7936
1999) .
Such
perspectives on networks
and
transna
tional practices have influenced a number
of disciplines, including Asian American
Studies, to
expand their field
of
investiga
tion beyond the North American conti
nent (Ong
2003)
.
Furthermore, for many anthropolo
gists,
global flows and the ruptures
of dis
placement suggest that cultures are not
contained in nation-states and that cul
tural forms become reconstituted in
con
texts
of
capitalist accumulation, travel,
tation; rather, they are expressions
of
a
habitus that is finely tuned to the turbu
lence
of
late capital ism in the Asia
Pacific (Ong
1999, 136).
In
short, the fundamental problems
of
modernity, where mobile technological
and social forms constitute modern
human beings, suggest that area special
ists
must consider spatial practices beyond
those given
by
political geography or
national culture. A more fundamental
problem, in globalizing times,
is
rethink
ing about
the
very forms and values
of
the
individual and collective life
of
human
beings, beyond the large abstractions
of
society, nation, culture, and economy.
There
is
a need
to pay
attention to how
modern technology, rationality, and ethics
affect people in Southeast
Asia,
influenc
ing the
ways
they reflect upon, know
about, and manage themselves.
was
useful
in
stressing instability, the
con
stant threat
of
fission between ruler and
local factions and alliances shifting
to
other power centers. The focus on the
dynamism
of
power relations
is
very valu
able indeed and goes some distance
toward shaking up the tendency
of
many
scholars to view contemporary political
forms
as
stabilized and inflexible.
Current concerns about the contin
gency
of
modern power do
not
automati
cally rely on the state form for framing
the problem-space.
For
a while,
scholars
talked about "the global and the local,
but these abstractions do not capture the
multiple
scales of
political integration or
regulation. More recently, geographers
such as
Kris
Olds and Peter Dicken in their
volume
Globalisation
and
the Asia-Pacific
Contested Territories 1999)
have
stressed
the multi-scalar dimensions of power, thus
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situating the effects
of
globalizing forces
at the regional, national, and local
levels.
Unfortunately, the focus on scalar
processes has been highly economistic and
structural
in
orientation. Furthermore, the
notion of scale as a metric for sociospatial
structuralization under capitalism
is
mainly concerned about how scalar con
figurations are linked to global networks
of market action. But these abstracted
spaces
do not tell us that new sociopoliti
cal
spaces are being produced through
global networks.
Obviously, there is the need for more
careful embedding
of
our inquiries in par
ticular problem-spaces, defined
by
spe-
cific networks of economic, social, and
political relations. Indeed,
besides
the
scholarship on overseas Chinese, older
historical works have traced transnational
linkages, for example, in the investigation
of Islamic mercantilism, the flows
of
con
tract workers, and the opium trade. A
more recent view
of
imperial situations
is
Ann Stoler's study (1995)
of
colonial
forms of biopower. Stoler maintains that
the identities
of
European bourgeois sub-
jects in metropolitan centers were
dependent upon mechanisms
that
mar
ginalized mestizo and native subjects in
the colonies. More recently,
Eric
Taglia
cozzo 2003) presented an interesting
paper at Berkeley
that focuses
on the
back-and-forth struggle between smug
glers and the techniques
of
regulation
deployed
by
the Dutch
across
the Straits
of Malacca. Nevertheless, the elucidation
of far-flung trade and lines
of
regulation
s still conceived largely in terms of their
necessary
support
to
the functionings
of
the colonial state.
In my view, more dynamic ideas of
spa-
tiality than the state form require a
greater sensitivity and alertness to varied
configurations
of
spatialized power, inter
est in
power operating at different
scales,
and
connections between different scales
of action. Following Foucault 1991), I
maintain that what we
call
the state
is
the
outcome
of
diverse projects that translate
specific programs
into
general terms.
Instead of speaking about a state as a uni
fied apparatus
of
rule (Scott
1998),
I con
sider government as a critical and
problematizing activity, variously
informed
by
political rationalities that
define particular schemes for representing
and reproducing reality and for making
things thinkable and realizable through
intervention and engineering Rose
1996,
42).
At any one point, there are diverse
technologies of government or strategies
of authorities
to
define problems and
objects, enact programs, and
assemble
procedures and techniques
to
produce
particular normative outcomes for individ
uals and society. Technologies
of
govern
mentality do not therefore have uniform
effects on the entire population or across
the national territory.
In my thinking about state power in a
region
of
Asian tiger economies, there
fore, I consider the specific strategies that
link state authorities and global corpora
tions, resulting in what I call graduated
sovereignty, or the different iated regu
lation over
the
population and
the
national space (Ong
2000).
First, gradu
ated sovereignty identifies the effects
of
the coordination of economic partner
ships
with the regulation
of
population.
Neoliberal reasoning adopted
by
tech
nocrats stresses the differentiated regula
tion
of
the population
in
order to
be
more economically competitive on the
one hand and letting
social
rights
be
increasingly coordinated
by
market calcu
lations on the other.
Thus,
pre-existing
forms of ethnic governmentality-ethnic
Chinese in
Singapore, elite Malay bumi-
putera in Malaysia-are no longer suffi
cient, but must include social regulation
to
enhance skills attractive
to
global mar
kets
(Ong
1999,
ch .
8)
. At the
same
time,
biopolitical differentiation produces disci
plinary practices
that
discriminate against
low-skill and migrant workers.
Second,
graduated sovereignty also refers to the
spatial outcomes
of
differentiated regula
tion, in that state-firm partnerships bring
about special technological zones that
come under the control
of
corporate
rather than political authorities. A strik
ing example
is
Batamindo, the Singapore
administered Batam Industrial Estate in
the
Riau
archipelago
that
I visited
two
years ago. This technological zone is
operated by Singaporean technocrats,
while
the
role
of
Batam officials
is
reduced to that
of
rubber-stamping the
corporate-driven policies regulating the
flows
of
labor, capital, and technology.
The regulation
of
the zone by foreigners
is
reminiscent
of
an earlier system
of
dis
persed
administration and taxation
by
river chiefs described
by
James
Siegel
in
he Rope
o
God 1969).
In
short, gradu
ated sovereignty describes a problem
space
not
bound
by
culture,
the
nation-state, or markets, but rather one
defined by particular configurations of
power relations produced
by
the coordi
nation
of
governmentality and corporate
networks in a globalized era. These
spaces of differentiated sovereignty are
not merely technical
in
nature; they play
a role
in
shaping our ideas
of
what it
means to
be
a human being . Technologi
cal zones often smuggle in nationalist
aspirations and entail the construction or
naturalization
of
racial, ethnic, and
gender differences within, as well as
across, transnational networks.
Constell ations cologies of Flexible
Capita l and Actors
An emerging trend
in
the human sciences
is
to consider how the analytics
of
modern
power-technology knowledge, and
ethics-are involved
in
the constitution
of
diverse modern subjects anthropos) and
social forms oikos) (Collier and Ong
2003). This
perspective allows
me to
think
about globalization as the spread
of
global forms of rationality, technology,
and politics that
shape
and give value
to
human life and society.
Thus,
instead
of
using the global, national, regional, or
cultural frameworks
to
investigate
social
change, our challenge
is
to engage what
Robert Merton
calls
mid-range theoriz
ing, an analytical alertness to problem
spaces
shaped by emerging constellations
of
diverse elements-governmentality
institutions, actors, and cultural discourse.
Elsewhere, I have argued that the
Deleuzean concept
of
assemblage
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987) allows us to
capture the intersection
of
disparate com
ponents,
of
the old and the new, and
of
processes
of
territorialization and de-terri
toria izat ion (Collier and Ong 2003) .
Assemblage allows
us to
designate an
emerging cluster
of
regimes, technolo
gies,
and networks
that
inscribe
social
forms and
values.
It captures the contin
gent way diverse elements are brought
into interaction and how their polyvalent
cultural associations and values are
shaped
in
these unfolding relationships.
For me then, a problem-space is defined
by
a particular constellation
of
diverse
relationships that translates political proj
ects from a center
of
calculation into a
network of
locales
dispersed
across
terri
tory Rose
1996;
Latour
1986).
Rapid
social
change in Southeast Asia or anywhere
begs
for the kind
of
analytical entry that
captures the ways various
elements
administrative rationality, procedures,
modes
of judgment-are
brought into a
kind
of
assemblage for re-engineering
and re-inscribing values in society.
For instance, in the aftermath of the
Asian financial
crisis
and the collapse
of
the tiger-model
of
development, new
alignments between technology, govern
mentality, and actors reconfigured strate
gic relations that have their own spatial
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- - -
I - - '
- -
forms and dynamics. Indeed, ecology has
entered the lexicon
of
Southeast Asian
technocrats who use terms
such
as web,
cluster, and ecosystem
to
suggest the
new forms
of
linkage, exchange, and
feedback loops that are being forged
between functions systems, markets, and
the social environment. What
is
distinctive
about the new ecological sense
of
admin
istration
is
the deliberate orchestration
of
circulations and interactions among
spe
cific global and local institutions, actors,
and values, with the goal
of
generating
nonlinear dynamics.
Perhaps
inspired
by
complexity theory, Asian technocrats hope
that such synergy between foreign institu
tions and local entities, expatriates, and
local populations will enhance the pro
duction
of
new collective economic and
intellectual properties.
Such
novel combi
nations
of
internal and external
cap
ital ,
knowledge, and populations thus engen
der what I call ecologies
of
flexible capi
tal and expertise Ong
2005)
.
Let me
identify two assemblages of heteroge
neous components in contemporary
Southeast Asia .
The Singaporean
Ecosys
tem
In
a National
Day speech
launching the
new Singapore, prime minister Goh Chok
Tong declared that:
Today, wealth
is
generated
by
new
ideas,
more than
by
improving the
ideas of
others
.. The
U.
S.
economy has
done immensely well
because
it enjoys
a 'brain gain' year after
year. For
exam
ple,
one quarter
of
the companies in
Silicon Valley are created
by
or
led by
Indian and Chinese immigrants. That is
why we have to bring in multi-national
talent, like the way we brought
in
MNCs [multinational corporations] .
Like
MNCs,
multinational talent, or
MNTs
, will bring in new expertise,
fresh ideas and global connections and
perspectives. I believe that they will
produce lasting benefits
for
Singa
pore. '
Technocrats at
the
planning nerve
center, the Economic Development Board
EDB), have attracted global institutions
and actors
to
develop local expertise
in
banking, business management, and
biotechnology industry. The goal
is
to
build a vibrant and effervescent enter
prise
ecosystem,
where large and small
enterprises can thrive by leveraging on
innovation and intellectual property to
create value
EDB 2000-2002, 9).
Through
strategic partnerships between state ven-
20
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005
ture capital and world-class institutions,
knowledge networks link universities such
as Chicago, MIT, and Johns Hopkins to
local universities and
research
institutions.
The
goal is
to
make Singapore into a
global schoolhouse and
an
Asian hub
for expertise in international
business,
sci
ence, and technology Olds and Thrift
2005). These institutional networks are
conduits
for
funneling
in
foreign students
(mainly from China and India) and West
ern experts in order to engender the con
ditions for idea creation and research.
Collaborations
such
as the Singapore-MIT
Alliance are therefore more than about
training a new generation of Asian scien
tists; they are about using engineering as
a
social
technology
to
configure a transna
t ional knowledge and information society
centered in Singapore.
Such
an
ecology
of
flexible capital and
expertise regulates external and internal
relationships
of
inclusion and exclusion,
with consequences for the meaning
of
society and citizenship. New values associ
ated with flexible knowledge regimes and
technological and risk-taking skills are
coded into the technologies
of
govern
ment. Foreign scientists, bankers, and
other professionals, as well as
science
and
business
students from China and India,
have been the ones to benefit most hand
somely
from
government funds, tax
regimes, and
access to
employment
opportunities. The moral demands
of
a so
called technopreneurial citizenship
have risen higher as citizens are expected
to compete
with
Asian foreigners on
home ground. Technopreneurial citizen
ship
stresses
knowledge and competitive
ness at a regional scale so that the nation
can succeed in the informational econ
omy.
The
continual influx
of
expatriates
and their coding as the scientific experts
or entrepreneuri
al
subjects has coincided
with the retrenchment
of
less competitive
workers in a variety
of
fields. Growing
publ ic anxiety has surfaced in the state
controlled media and
in
the streets. There
is a growing fear among members
of
the
ethnic Chinese majority
of
being re
nativized,
of
becoming members
of
a
second -class category in relation to privi
leged expatriates, especially foreign Chi
nese
and Indians.
The Malaysia Corridor
The Malaysian project
is
much more
modest, and it involves
an
assemblage
of
different elements for transforming
Malaysia into a node of high-tech circuits.
In
a recent
speech,
the minister
of
finance
claims that:
We
shall all become citizens
of
the K
economy
.
. Survival in a borderless
global economy
based
on knowledge
requires everyone
to be
equipped with
new skills and assimilate the culture
of
high technology and dynamic entre
preneurship. This
is
not wishful think
ing . In fact,
the
Government
has
painstakingly endeavoured to build a
strong foundation, in particular
through education and human
resource development. I
am
confident
that there
is
someone in every village
who has acquired skills and knowledge
in the field
of
technology from
an
institution of higher learning. I believe
this
was not
possible five or ten
years
ago
.
.To ensure
success
from the new
economy, we need a pool
of
the best
talent from at home and abroad.
Efforts need
to be
taken
to
hire the
best brains regardless
of
race or
nationality, from Bangalore
to
Califor
nia.
This
is a step towards creating a
world-class workforce.'
The
main project
of
course
is
the Mul
timedia Super Corridor that grew out
of
smart partnerships between the gov
ernment and foreign
business
and
an
alignment
of
a Malaysian embryonic high
tech work force with Indian expatriates.
Billions
of
dollars from oil wealth
have
been poured into the building
of business
centers, highways, academic institutions,
and shopping malls in order
to
reposition
Malaysia as the site
of
high-tech sweat
shops . What seems most compelling to
foreign companies about the digital corri
dor are its connections to other Asian
markets.
The
majority
of
the firms are
high-tech service providers
that seek to
test and develop their products for the
regional markets. What appears to be
of
strategic interest
to
foreign companies are
the multilingual skills
of
Malaysian work
ers in English, Hindi, Malay-Indonesian,
Chinese, and
Thai and
their
cultural
familiarity with neighboring countries.
For giant Indian software service
providers, the corridor
is
also an ideal site
for expanding offshore
business in
South
east
Asia. Indian companies or their
sub
sidiaries provide software packages in the
areas of
banking, insurance, telecommu
nications, and manufacturing
that
are
localized, or adapted for applications in
a variety
of
venues in other developing
countries. Malaysia's high-tech workers
help to translate and customize multime
dia technologies
such
as smart
cards
for
use
in
Malaysia and
in
smaller markets
such as Thailand, Burma, Saudi Arabia,
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6/7
and parts
of
Africa. While foreign compa
nies and
expatriates consider the corridor
a steppingstone to other markets or
higher-level knowledge hubs, local politi
cians
hope that their
presence
will foster
conditions for the growth
of
a domestic
cyber society.
What, one may
ask,
happens
to
sover
eignty and citizenship when technologi
cal links between knowledge hubs come
to undermine pre-existing forms
of
ethnic
governmentality? Unlike Singapore,
where local students are prodded
to be
globally competitive, the Malaysian
authorities are struggling
to
get Malay
bumiputera
college students to be com
petitive just in the domestic context.
Recent moves to expose
Malay students
to trans-ethnic competition
by
recruiting
non-Malays to Malay junior
science
col
leges raised
a storm
of
protest. Similarly,
new rules
for
English instruction in
sci
ence
and math have created a
groundswell
of
resistance.
Even
among
the well-educated Malays, there
is
fear
that the new renewed stress on English,
science,
mathematics,
and
technology
is
a
plot
to
keep Malays down, a kind
of
cyber-colonialism imposed
by
the govern
ment and its capitalist allies. Mahathir,
himself a major architect
of
preferential
treatment for Malay
bumi-
puteras
now claims that
it
identities and that links the fate of the
Muslim country
to
a wider zone
of
West
ern expertise.
I have argued that a neoliberalist style
of
administrative practice
in
Southeast
Asia is
reconfiguring regulatory networks
that bring foreign institutions and experts
directly into play with the domestic popu
lation
in
order
to
stimulate higher
levels
of knowledge, creativity, and productivity.
Administrative techniques in Singapore
and Malaysia
have assembled
rather
dis
tinct orders
of
ecological governmental
i ty-one develops private-public
partnerships
to
become a global school
house and a biotechnology hub, the other
a second-level center in regional technol
ogy networks. Through the
lens of assem
blage, I have identified the particular
clusters
of
spatial, social, and political rela
tionships that
shape
new
spaces of
tech
nology and governmentality in
the
aftermath
of
the Asian financial crisis.
Assemblage sand Re-Assemblages
Constellations
of
new relationships
brought into alignment
for
particular
projects
pay
no attention
to
abstractions
such as nation, economy, politics, society,
and culture. The concept of assemblage
allows us
to
discern the disparate
ways
eignty in the Philippines are now crystal
lized around
Islamic
rebels, terrorist
sus
pects,
and
US
troops. A new problem is
emerging around the nexus formed
by
a
rhetoric
of
moderate
Islam,
surveillance
technology, and religious radicalization
that
is recasting the political meanings
of
Muslim society and
of
being Muslim in
Southeast
Asia
(Ong
2002).
The prevailing focus on nationalism
and culture in Southeast Asian Studies
reveals
the extent
to
which the moral
projects
of
the nation and assumptions
about a unique historical trajectory have
dominated our analytical endeavor.
This
ideological slant
of
championing gen
uine national projects
is
by no
means
unique
to
Southeast
Asian
Studies. There
are however
severe
analytical handicaps
that come from adhering so closely to the
objects
of
our
study,
and they do not
cap
ture the complex and contingent constel
lations
of
power relations that variously
shape
modern sociality
and
subjects
in
fast-changing milieus. The above exam
ples suggest that we need to ask and
define questions
in
a different
way.
A
focus on shifting spatiality
does
not mean
that
the state or the nation are no longer
important units of analysis, only that they
are
not always the dominant frames for
analyzing political power.
Deleuze and Guattari have
should
be
considered a
prosthesis to be dis
carded. Indeed, the sense of
security
that
comes from
being coddled
by
affirma
tive action programs is
hollow,
since
it
rests
on the
knowledge of others, and
it
Constellations
of new
relationships
brought
into alignment
for particular
projects
pay
argued that
spaces of
power
are segmented between
molar organization and
flows
of
micropolitics that
coexist and
cross
over into
each other (1987, 213). The
rigid lines
of
the state are
no attention to abstractions such
as
nation
economy
politics
society
and culture.
can
be
swept away by
global competition that
depends
on
new skills and
knowledge. The Multimedia Corridor rep
resents
a new regime
of
governance that
is
pitted against the older regime where
wealth-making opportunities were
based
less
on expertise than on racial privilege.
Some Malays
feel that they need not
suc
cumb
to
pressures
to
acquire intellectual
capital,
since
the natural wealth
of
the
country-oil, gas,
timber,
rubber-will
keep
many comfortable. Anti-cyber resist
ance is simmering among Malays-even
when they draw material benefits from a
digital economy. Being plugged into the
global knowledge networks inspires
not
the fear of being left behind, as is the
case among Singaporeans, but the fear
of
being cyber-colonized and set back
by
a
technological project that gives priority
to
science
over
race-
and-religion-based
governmentality, networks, and actors are
put into play, shaping a variety of prob
lems
and outcomes in a contingent and
open-ended way.
For
instance, a variety
of
institutions-the immigration authorities
in
receiving countries, recruitment agen
cies,
labor smugglers, and middle-class
families-are involved in the astonishing
growth
of
flexible labor markets
in
South
east
Asia.
Another kind
of
problem
cre
ated
by
the alignment of disparate
elements
has
brought together the World
Bank,
local officials, and
NGOs in
develop
ment projects that are remaking societies
and identities in Cambodia and
Laos
(Goldman
2001). In
the post-September 11
world, we can talk about re-assemblages
of power relations throughout the region.
For
example,
issues of
security and sover-
cut
by
diagonal flows
of
political reasoning, capital,
and technical practices
through which nationalist,
ethnic, class, and gender differences are
articulated and inscribed onto the emerg
ing
spaces.
Our modes
of
inquiry would
benefit from giving attention to particular
assemblages of intersecting lines and
flows and how specific relations and ele
ments are brought into play, with out
comes that are not predetermined. Such
low-flying theorizing and inquiry into
spe
cific problems are important for the revi
talization of area specialization, since
concepts
and
observations at the middle
level have important comparative value
across regions and disciplines. For
instance, there is enormous purchase
to
concepts
such
as moral economy,
imagined communities,
capital
ism, and geo-body
that have
emerged
from studying configurations formed
by
SEAP
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21
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l
l
novel combinations
of
relationships
observed
in
Southeast
Asian
contexts.
The
influence of these concepts in other disci
plines is undeniable and something we
can be
extremely proud
of
. But useful
analytical categories emerging out of
Southeast
Asian Studies have
been few
and far between (though much better
than
in
East Asian Studies). When we
grapple with actual problems and how
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3
Flexible citizenship reflects this grasp
of the
intersecting forces of rigidity and flight : I fur-
ther develop this concept of intersecting lines
and flows in Ong 2003.
