Geoffrey benjamin: local and global: social transformation in Southeast Asia. He says Professor Syed Hussein Alatas was the only scholar in Singapore who was interested in longer-term social and cultural process.'my main concern in this essay is with the different types of socioreligious patterns that have been followed in Southeast Asia since early times,' He says.
Geoffrey benjamin: local and global: social transformation in Southeast Asia. He says Professor Syed Hussein Alatas was the only scholar in Singapore who was interested in longer-term social and cultural process.'my main concern in this essay is with the different types of socioreligious patterns that have been followed in Southeast Asia since early times,' He says.
Geoffrey benjamin: local and global: social transformation in Southeast Asia. He says Professor Syed Hussein Alatas was the only scholar in Singapore who was interested in longer-term social and cultural process.'my main concern in this essay is with the different types of socioreligious patterns that have been followed in Southeast Asia since early times,' He says.
Social Transformation in Southeast Asia Essays in Honour of Professor Syed Hussein Alatas Edited by Riaz Hassan BRILL LEIDEN BOSTON 2005 CHAPTER FOURTEEN CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: THE LONG VIEW Geoffrey Benjamin I In the same year as I began my own involvement in Southeast Asian studies, Syed Hussein Alatas published a critical essay on scholarly perceptions of the region that was in advance of its time (Alatas 1964).1 Alatas argued that interpretations of Southeast Asian social history had exhibited the easy stereotyping that comes from adopt- ing diffusionist theories of cultural development in place of under- standings generated by sociological and anthropological studies of daily life. This had led many of the writers to propose, arbitrarily, that almost all cultural innovations had been imported ready-made from outside the region. Alatas showed, to the contrary, that the rather thin archaeological and documentary data then available could just as well have supported explanations based on local social process and cultural innovation. Research since the 1960s has re-affirmed Alatas's not denying the role of inputs (both mate- rial and ideational) from outside the region, where these can be firmly demonstrated by empirical research. My main concern in this essay is with the different types of socio- religious patterns that have been followed in Southeast Asia since early times. The underlying mode-of-orientation theory has been pre- sented in greater detail elsewhere (Benjamin 1993: 348-350). In its most explicit form, this approach recognises four distinct modes of orientation: the Transcendental, Immanent, Dialectical, and Zen. I I would like to acknowledge my appreciation of Professor Alatas's readiness to discuss broader issues of Southeast Asian sociology with me at the Bukit Timah campus of the former University of Singapore, and again at Kent Ridge, between the 1960s and the 1980s. He was the only scholar at the time in Singapore who had an active interest in the study of longer-term social and cultural process, in the Weberian tradition that later came to occupy much of my own attention. 262 CHAPTER FOURTEEN These labels identify the different ways in which people's attention structures are institutionalised: outward, inward, or dialectically (as the case may be). The institutionalisation takes place through processes usually described as 'cultural'-as if they just 'happened'. But I would prefer to recognise these patterns as resulting from political action undertaken in specific historical and social contexts. Because the different modes of orientation generate distinct pat- terns of interpersonal attention and interactional style, those who wish to achieve and maintain power for themselves within a poliry (a social network institutionalised or thought of as a power-domi- nated domain) will strive to establish just one of the orientational modes as the over-arching mode in the culture of the people they wish to dominate. This they will do by actively (though not neces- sarily thinkingly) reshaping those patterns of action and communi- cation that generate the different orientational modes in the dominated individuals' ontogeny. If this succeeds, they will have created a regime-- a culture actively systematised by sanction-backed restrictions, so that only one of the possible modes of orientation remains capable of overt and public 'matter-of-fact' expression, whatever the individu- als involved may privately feel. 2 (A structured 'regime' thus comes to bear the same relation to an unstructured 'culture' as a controlled 'polity' does to an uncontrolled social network or 'society'.) In polities where the political domination is limited (as, for exam- ple, in many 'tribal' communities) the dialectical mode will usually prevail. Where the domination is strong, however, tendentiousness will emerge and either the transcendental or immanent mode will usually be made to prevail. 3 If the immanent mode prevails (as it did in some of the pre-modern states discussed below), it will be as a means of making the populace see themselves as having no con- cern with the ruler's actions, which can then proceed within an unin- terfered-with domain (the court) encapsulated off from the attention of the population at large. But if the transcendental mode prevails 2 Since each of these modes imposes coherence there can be no merging or grad- ual transition between them: only leaps are possible, i.e. flip-flops of the attention where what was out-of-focus 'ground' a moment ago is now seen as in-focus 'figure', and vice versa. Regime formation can therefore be viewed as an attempt to prevent these flip-flops of attention from occurring in the dominated population. Reversals will nevertheless continue to'Dccur, of course, whether publicly acknowledged or not. 3 The Zen mode can be ignored for the purposes of empirical social analysis; it will not be mentioned again in this essay. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 263 (as it did in many of the pre-modern polities discussed in this essay, as well as in the world's modern nation-states) it will be as a means of making the people see themselves as the positively re-acting depen- dents of some other's will-their ruler's or God's.4 For the purposes of the present essay, however, it will be appro- priate to simplify this approach somewhat, by distinguishing two main orientations the transcendental and the non-transcendental. , The latter subsumes both the immanent and dialectical modes. People can thus base their actions EITHER (non-transcendentally) on the immediately concrete, here-and-now elements that they perceive with their senses OR (transcendentally) on what other people assert to be the case, focusing their attention on things outside of their immedi- ate situation. 5 My primary concern, then, will be with the pre-modern conditions for the emergence of the transcendental mode-the mode of orientation within which the modern nation-state operates. The clearest exemplification of the difference between the tran- scendental and non-transcendental modes of orientation can be found in the religious sphere. The 'official' varieties of Islam and Christianity are highly transcendental, in that their adherents' belief in God comes, not from direct experience, but by lending assent to what someone else has asserted to be the case. 6 There is an intrinsically political element to this: the adherents, regardless of their own expe- riential background, are according authority to other people to say how things are. In contrast, consider the non-transcendental views of the world that are current in societies that do not regularly pay serious atten- tion to issues situated outside their own immediate concrete reality. 4 For analyses that employ this approach explicitly see the following: Benjamin I for long-term perspectives on variations in kinship in relation. to modes of Benjamin 1988 for the transcendentalism of the modem 1993 for a 'transcendental' case in relation to language (Malay); Benpmm 1994 for a 'dialectical' case in relation to religion (Temiar); Benjamin in press a, for a study of the shift from dialectical to transcendental in contemporary religious life (also Temiar). 5 This bears an obvious relation to the classical Gemeinschafll Gesellschafl distinction and other similar theories, but the approach taken here is not so baldly dichotomous as those theories often are. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere (Benjamin 2002: 14- 15, Ms(a)), this particular distinction can be further referred to the more fundamental distinction between indigeny and exogeny-a theme I shall no here. 6 There are of course differences between these two relIgIOUS tradItIOns-as indeed there a;e within The mode-of-orientation theory proposed here is not intended as an explanation for everything. other features must be taken into consid- eration too when undertaking cultural comparison. 264 CHAPTER FOURTEEN (Today, because of the pervasive influence of the modern nation- state, few such societies remain, and only a minority of researchers have had direct experience of them.) People living under such social frameworks normally do not concern themselves with formulating views of the world in terms of general principles that come from the outside. Their view, on the contrary, is often little more than a sim- ple description of how they actually see the world. (For an especially clear example, see Endicott 1979 on the religion of a tribal popu- lation in Peninsular Malaysia.) In the religious sphere, they are unlikely to give credence to beliefs for which they cannot claim direct evi- dence (through dreams, trance, divination, or other such concretis- ing techniques). Their concern will be with the here-and-now rather , than with imposed abstract principles. II What are the implications of the transcendental/non-transcendental distinction in Southeast Asia, and under what circumstances did the different modes of orientation arise? Until the emergence of cen- tralising political processes in some areas 2000 years ago, prehistoric developments in Southeast Asia would have led most of the social formations to be non-transcendental (probably mostly dialectical) in their cultural orientation. The adoption of agriculture and of 'neolithic' technologies in Southeast Asia did not bring about the societal changes that are often regarded as typical of Neolithic developments (as exhibited in India China, West Asia and the Americas): rapid population growth: increased division of labour, and early urbanism. 7 Despite claims to the contrary put forward in the 1970s, agriculture was probably not a primary development in Southeast Asia. On present evidence, it was introduced from the coastal regions of southern China (Bellwood 1992: 91), and was based on a variety of crops, including rice. Other local plants were also brought into domestication. s This early farm- This view is suppo;t.ed by the frequent unaltered continuation of the pre-agri- stone tool tradItIons of Southeast Asia (the Hoabinhian, etc.) into agricul- tural tImes, and as recently as first millennium BCE in some places (Bellwood 1992: 86). 'Many Neolithic societies (such as the Maya) were undoubtedly far larger and complex than metal-using o?es in Southeast Asia' (Bellwood 1992: 94). Bellwood also pomts out that there IS no good archaeological evidence for agri- CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 265 ing had relatively little effect on the societal patterns that had already emerged under the nomadic or semi-sedentary foraging regimes that developed in the Hoabinhian period, dating to several millennia ago. The reasons for this are still somewhat obscure, but they relate to the particular plants and animals that were available for domestica- tion, and with the character of the terrains on which these devel- opments took place. Southeast Asia is characterised by two main climatic zones (Bellwood 1992: 59-64). Within five degrees north and south of the equator, heavy vegetation sits on poor soils that are not suitable for intensive cultivation, and must therefore usually be dealt with by swidden (shifting) farming. The forests contain relatively few large meat-bear- ing mammals, and the relatively unchanging day-length precluded the growing of rice (which is photoperiodic) until the advent of mod- ern varieties and techniques. On the other hand, millets, tubers, sago, coconut, banana and breadfruit were important crops. These may have been less nutritious than rice, but they held other significant advantages: they did not require as much land clearance as the more light-demanding rice would have done (Bellwood 1992: 93-94), and (being 'harvested' only as needed for consumption) they did not gen- erate any marked demand for fixed long-term storage facilities. Beyond the equatorial zone, the climate is seasonal, with a marked dry period. The vegetation is therefore lighter, the soils less damaged by leaching and hard-pan formation, and the terrain more suitable for large meat-bearing mammals. Rice cultivation (which had first developed in southern China between 5000 and 3000 BCE) was taken up in these parts of mainland Southeast Asia and Taiwan at various times from around 3000 BCE. But it was only one of several crops, for the people also cultivated millets, cotton, sugarcane, some legumes, the greater yam (Dioscorea) , and perhaps taro. The archaeological evi- dence suggests that early rice was not grown universally throughout the region, and that its adoption was not due to the pressure of pop- ulation growth, as some writers have suggested. It seems to have been favoured initially because it was especially suited to natural swampland and alluvial plains-land that would otherwise have culture based purely on tubers and fruits west of New Guinea. In some of my pre- vious writings on early Southeast Asia, I made quite a lot of this possibility, influenced by the work of Carl Sauer (1952). Those arguments now need to be modified. 266 CHAPTER FOURTEEN involved a great deal of labour. Swidden ('shifting', 'dry') cultivation of rice was secondary to this development. Therefore, while population growth and movement into new areas must certainly have occurred, it would have been altogether less significant than in other Old World 'neolithic' areas that had begun to cultivate large annual cereal crops. 'Large-scale pressure of people on land is not evidenced in the archaeological or pre-modern ethno- graphic records for Southeast Asia or even southern China. It cannot even be invoked to explain renowned ethnographic cases of agricultural expansion such as that of the Iban of Sarawak' (Bellwood 1992: 93). Instead, Bellwood suggests, the search for new frontiers, and the wealth and prestige they allow, was a major motivation for opening up new land in early Southeast Asia. Why should population growth have been smaller in Southeast Asia than in other parts of the post-Neolithic world? I propose that this had to do with the amount of 'complete' protein available. Our bodies are made of protein, which we cannot synthesise in the absence of the eight so-called essential amino acids (eaten, optimally, at the same meal). If these are available in increasing quantities, then pop- ulations can expand. If, however, the supply of essential amino acids is relatively constant, then so also will be the rate of population growth. Animal products provide all the essential amino acids, but no single plant source does so. Most of the plant foods cultivated in Southeast Asia have been poor in amino energy, but less productive of body mass. Grains such as rice, which do con- tain a reasonable amount of some essential amino acids, have not been grown in sufficient quantity until recently to have had the huge effect on population growth that they have had elsewhere. The region's livestock (chicken, duck, pig) are typically raised on the remains of human meals, the availability of which crucially depends on the number of people. The other major source of animal pro- tein has been fish; but this has been gathered rather than produced. 9 In the absence of open grassland throughout the region, the pas- toral grazing of herd animals has not normally been an option, thereby removing a major factor for developing an increased divi- sion of classical division between herder and farmer. 9 Classical Angkor, however, was later to exhibit population growth based largely on fish, but this was due to the special circumstances of Tonie Sap lake. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 267 It seems, then, that social organisation in pre-modern Southeast Asia, especially in the more tropical parts of the region, would have exhibited a low rate of population growth even after the emergence of agriculture. 'this in turn would have had other consequences: (a) a low degree of division of labour, as everyone would have been equally involved in all subsistence activities; (b) a low degree of sex- ual differentiation, as the lack of pressure on land would not have predisposed people to develop unilineal descent structures; (c) little pressure on the development of long-term storage facilities, and hence a rather late development of permanent settlements. In such a social framework, the local community would have been the main basis for the individual's experience. Little attention needed to be paid to what was going on in other communities, except of course for finding spouses and setting up the other relations necessary for keeping social life going. There would have been little extra-local political control, or ideological reference to situations outside the immediate community. One factor that would have disrupted this pattern was trade in goods that could not be obtained locally. Evidence of such trade in early Southeast Asia, especially in the .... seasonal northerly regions, has been coming to light from a variety of archaeological excava- tions, dating from around 2000 BCE onwards, and especially after the development of bronze and iron technology. The presence of variegated and sometimes elaborate burial practices at some sites has suggested that these developments were associated with the emer- gence of social ranking, based on the amassing of prestige goods. The Thai site of Kok Phanom Di, for example, has such deposits, dated between 2000 and 1400 BCE (Higham and Rachanie 1994). Prestige goods are associated both with overland and sea-trade within the region, going back to the second or third centuries BCE. The widespread distribution of the famed Dongson bronzes throughout the region is major evidence for this, as is the less well-known Sahuynh-Kalanay art style, found concurrently in both southern Vietnam (,Champa') and the Philippines. III Eventually therefore, even in Southeast Asia, people began in varying . degrees to attend to issues lying outside of their own local experience. This was partly because the outside world became interested in the 268 CHAPTER FOURTEEN region-primarily, it seems, as a source of luxury goods. Around 2,000 years ago, traders from India, China and elsewhere began making calls along the coasts of Southeast Asia. It has been claimed that they were pushed by the relative closure of the 'Silk Road' through Central Asia. But just as important were exploratory voyages made by indigenous Southeast Asian seafarers, who are known to have reached the east coast of Mrica, travelling via other parts of Asia. These voyages probably long predated the trading visits of other people to the region. As a consequence of these developments, a variety of state-like polities emerged in various parts of Southeast Asia between about 1000 BCE and 1000 CE. (For comprehensive discussions of these developments, see Wheadey 1983, Taylor 1992, Christie 1995.) These formations have been referred to variously as 'chiefdoms', 'states' and 'mandalas', the distinction between which has often seemed vague. Each of these terms has its uses, however, and all three refer to social formations thought of as being centralised in varying degrees. But, whereas 'chiefdoms' (despite being ranked in relation to differential prestige) are still in their organisation, 'states' are char- acterised by the emergence of a supra-kinship level of organisation. The Sanskrit term mandala, on the other hand, refers to the idea that centralised polities (whether they are states or chiefdoms) can be thought of as nested one within the other, to form a yet higher pattern of hierarchical organisation. Here, however, I wish to empha- sise only what they have in common-namely, political centralisation, whether this be actual or merely ideal. The story of the initial emer- gence of chiefdoms, states and (eventually) mandalas in Southeast Asia is currendy in flux, as new archaeological discoveries are announced. For this reason, and for lack of space, I will have to gready sim- plify the issues. In varying degrees and for different parts of the population, a new element had been introduced-the habit of looking outside of the immediate circumstances, because their lives had now become tied up with what was going on elsewhere. This was particularly true of those who had become the middlemen in the long-distance trade: they would have been inducted into a more transcendental view of the world, without, perhaps, dropping their earlier non-transcendental view entirely. The two views (transcendental and non-transcendental) now became alternatives within the same socia-cultural formation, with contrasts between the emerging royal courts (see below), which were perhaps more immanent in their orientation, and the wider CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 269 population whom the courts were trying to incorporate into a state- based regime. Later, these middlemen were to become the rulers and aristocrats in the coastal states that were set up in many parts of Southeast Asia. However, not all of the traditional states of Southeast Asia emerged out of long-distance trading relations; some of them accordingly instituted non-transcendental regimes. The pre-modern states of Southeast Asia can be categorised into kinds, according to the processes through which they arose. First, there were the inland sacred-city (or 'm.iddle kingdom') states, such as existed in ancient Java (with Borobudur, Prambanan and Dieng as monumental evidence), Cambodia (Angkor), Burma (Pagan) and some other places. Here, religious and political ideas emanat- ing from outside the region were allied with indigenous, rather than outsider-based, economic linkages. The ideas in question related mainly to the Brahminical Hindu (both Shivite and Vishnite) and Mahayana Buddhist views of the world, and were often brought back from India (and perhaps China) by Southeast Asians, as well as by visitors from those regions. These worldviews imaged the cosmos and the here-and-now as essentially the same: the one is just an ana- logue of the other. This led to the establishment of polities centred on the Devarqja or similar concepts of divine or meditative kingship, in which the kings presented themselves as incarnations of Shiva or Vishnu, or as Boddhisattvas (future Buddhas). (For the classic study of these polities, see Heine-Geldern 1942.) So long as the secular world seemed to be in tune with the cosmic realms, as mediated by the king in his palace, then all was well. These inland states had lit- de external trade, but exhibited complex intemallabour relations and much primary economic production. One might hypothesise that kingship was sustained in these states just as much because the pop- ulation wanted it (as a guarantee of their own personal well-being) as because the kings themselves were trying to maintain power. Second, there were the coastal trading states (or 'maritime' states) of Sumatra, Borneo, the Malay Peninsula (not necessarily Malay- speaking in earlier times), the Philippines (much later), parts of east- ern Indonesia, and parts of the Mainland (such as at the archaeological sites of Oc Eo in south-eastern Cambodia and 'Champa' in central Vietnam).10 The coastal people managed to enter into trade, probably 10 The states of 'Champa' (which were never unified into a single polity) seem to have had periods when they exhibited typical trading-state features, and periods when they were more like rice-growing 'sacred-city' states. 270 CHAPTER FOURTEEN in goods considered as luxuries elsewhere, with Chinese, Arab and other seafarers. Many of these goods were of little interest to the Southeast Asians themselves until the foreigners took them up, per- haps because, being at first more egalitarian, they had little need to express social status through material symbolism. The goods had meaning, therefore, only in outsider-linked contexts of action. Event- ually, some of the coastal and riverine dwellers found that they could make a living by mediating between the traders and the inland for- est-dwelling tribal populations who were the primary finders of the goods. Where the middleman niche proved successful, the situation was crystallised by the application of the notion of kingship, which most scholars have ascribed to Indian sources. The aristocracies of the states that emerged in these areas were primarily occupied in trading-a niche that they have maintained right up to present day. Even where the pre-modern states have been superseded, as in Indonesia, those among the indigenous population (as opposed to, say, the originally immigrant Chinese) who maintain these trading links are still largely of aristocratic descent: the peasant-descended still have little foothold on this sector of economic life. Third, there were the cultural suppletion (or m.ainland migra- tion) states formed by the incorporative spread from north to south of completely new cultural and political regimes, mostly during the last thousand years or less. These were formed by the southward spread of societal patterns and languages-but mostly not whole populations-already established further north in the mainland. Thus, speakers of Vietnamese, Tai languages (such as Siamese, Lao and Shan) and Burmese took over the earlier states (mostly of the 'mid- dle kingdom' type) that had been formed in the first millennium of the present era among Cham-, Khmer-, Mon- and Pyu-speaking peoples. The implantation of Malay culture in the north of the Peninsula, formerly a Mon-speaking area,11 belongs here too, even though that movement was from the south (Srivijayan Sumatra). These suppletive states became transcendentalised by virtue of the very fact that their social framework was imposed from elsewhere upon a population that underwent assimilatory change in the process. A major component of this shift was the imposition of Theravada II The claim that Mon culture was present in much of northern Peninsular Malaysia at that time is argued for in Benjamin 1987, 1997. See also Bauer 1992. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 27l Buddhism on the mainland and of Islam in the islands, which took place mainly between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Fourth, there were the colonial-response states. These have been less studied, but the work of Fox (1997) on the many small king- doms that arose on Timor and nearby islands as a result of six- teenth-century Portuguese contacts provides a detailed account of the kind of thing that could happen. Fourteen distinct states emerged on the small isiand of Roti, for example, through the monopolising by a few individuals of relations with the colonial power soon after the Portuguese arrived. State-formation in most of the Philippines was also brought about as part of the colonial enterprise, for (with the exception of some Muslim sultanates) there were no states there until the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, commencing in the six- teenth century. Ecology and sociery In Central Java and Cambodia the edaphic conditions allowed for the emergence of much denser populations than elsewhere in the region. Java had fertile volcanic soil and Cambodia a peculiar back- wards-flowing annual flood on the Mekong that brought much fer- tile silt into the TonIe Sap area. In such relatively dense populations, the speed and intensity of social communication would have been considerable-in contrast to the much more restrained communica- tion between coastal and inland populations in most of the coastal trading-state areas. Also, the distances in these inland states were not great, so ordinary people would frequently have witnessed the grandiose displays of court life for themselves. The idea of forming a state would therefore have become part of the consciousness of the ordi- nary people as well as of those who were being set up as aristocrats and rulers. This led to non-transcendentalist (in this case, imma- nentist) cultural regimes, orientated to the here-and-now. Outsiders were of little concern-or rather, if they ever appeared on the scene, their otherness was not considered an issue. Their mere presence was enough to bring them, for the moment, into consciousness, just as their absence would remove them from consciousness. Pagan was rather different, in that it was built in a region of poor arid soils. But food was transported down the Irrawady river from more fer- tile areas upstream to support the massive developments. In most other respects, it seems to have followed the same general pattern as that exhibited by the Javan and Cambodian developments. 272 CHAPTER FOURTEEN . In the coastal trading-states, however, there was a continuum: the coastal people who dealt with the outside world were operating from the start within a transcendental mode of orientation, while the inland tribal populations would at first still be holding to a non-transcen- dental (mostly dialectical) mode. The latter became transcendentalised only to the extent that they were incorporated into the state struc- ture as peasants, thereby ceasing to be tribal. This process, which began more than two millennia ago, continues up to the present day, and is not yet complete. Thus, of the four kinds of states discussed above, the coastal trading- states, the colonial-response states and the cultural-suppletion states would have involved a shift from an earlier non-transcendental regime to a transcendental one. But the inland 'middle kingdom' states- just as with the 'middle kingdom(s), of China-were formed in areas of high population density by processes that owed more to internal forces than to external connections. The coastal-trading and colonial- response states came into being as a direct result of the close connection of a few middlemen with outsiders, whose culture and source of power the ordinary people could not readily understand. But the inland, 'middle kingdom' states, like those of Java and Cambodia, were formed through the crystallisation of a mode of social consciousness that was already shared by the population as a whole. The greater density of communication on the ground in these areas would have facilitated this sharing. The divine rulers were probably maintained in position as much by popular pressure as through personal ambition. IV Let us now turn to the cultural and behavioural features that go with the differing modes of orientation. The transcendental mode is marked by an attitude that can be characterised as 'faith'. Non-transcendental worldviews, on the other hand, are marked by uninterest or scepticism, by a pragmatic pref- erence for direct evidence. 12 There is an inherently political dimension 12 These differences are presented, not as essences or 'racial' characters, but as cultural-i.e. actively cultivated-regjmes, which can be followed or not by individ- uals, as they choose. But the stakes are loaded by 'hegemonic' processes, as men- tioned earlier. (See also footnote 2.) CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 273 to these distinctions. If, in the transcendental mode, you put faith in what someone else says to be the case, you are making yourself subordinate to that person's authority. There is, at least for that moment, a hierarchical relation between the asserter and the assenter. The non-transcendental modes tend, however, in a less credulous direction, since they allow little scope for one person to try and per- suade another to give assent to that for which the first person has no direct evidence. If people cannot get the evidence for themselves, it will be difficult for' anyone else to try and persuade them of it. 13 Religion The more transcendental the theological structure of a religion, the more this-worldly is the associated practical consciousness likely to be. Herein lies an important paradox. Since God has been defined as wholly other, there is no point in attempting to make this world into a kind of inscrutable Other world. The This-world is distinct, and one might as well operate in it in terms appropriate to this world. Islam perhaps carries this view furthest. For example, Muslims are not allowed to ascribe any specific characteristics to God, beyond that of complete otherness. Conversely, for non-transcendentalists the world around them is the only world. This, rather than what someone else asserts to be the case, is what affects their daily life. The non-transcendental mode is normally associated with a lower degree of cultural 'differentiation'. There is no dualistic This-world/Other-world differentiation corre- sponding to what is asserted in the world-rejecting, salvation-seeking frameworks that are usually taken as typical of 'religion' (cf. Bellah 1964). For non-transcendentalists, dealing with spirits would belong within the same domain as, say, the getting of food. On the tran- scendental view, however, these activities would be thought of as belonging to separate domains. Islam, Christianity and Theravada Buddhism are highly suited to the transcendental mode of orientation. It is not surprising then, that the appropriate areas of Southeast Asia 13 A nice example of this occurs with regard to animistic ideas, especially in Southeast Asia, where it is often claimed that though one can inherit a spirit-guide from one's father, it is also a prerequisite that one must have a dream encounter for oneself with the spirit in question. Here, individual experience ranks higher than general principle. 274 CHAPTER FOURTEEN are now characterised by whichever of these religions happened to arrive first on the scene. l4 IslaIn: Islam was brought to Southeast Asia mainly by long-distance traders via southern India, and also China, commencing in the twelfth century. It was this religion, rather than Theravada Buddhism (which had not yet moved so far south), which replaced the earlier Mahayana Buddhism of the emerging Javanese and Malay worlds. In Southeast Asia, Islam has usually been associated with the setting up of tran- scendentally organised state regimes. Its spread corresponded closely with the incorporation of ever more people-who were until then, mostly pagans or Mahayanists-into the trading network. l5 They now came to view their lives as increasingly controlled by foci situated elsewhere in the world. Consequently, they would have been more likely to give assent to a transcendental religion, the claims of which they could not have direct evidence for. However, the population was not socially homogeneous, since there were egalitarian urban traders, hierarchical traders-turned-royals, and peripheral peasants. The responses of these different sectors correspond respectively to the santri, priyf.9ii and abangan patterns identified by Geertz (1964) for Java, but which have existed in similar, though unnamed, forms in the rest of Muslim Southeast Asia. In Java, orthodox Islam of the educated santri style (Dhofier 1982) was traditionally located along the north coast, which is where trad- ing states, not unlike those of the Malay world, were formed. Similar patterns of observance emerged elsewhere in the region, such as in Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra (Siegel 1969). These santri tradi- tions, operating in a transcendentalist framework, have favoured the rational, literate, urban forms of Islam. They are associated with trading and business, and exhibit a vigorous concern for this-worldly activities that bears striking similarities to the Calvinist ethic that 14 This is not the whole truth: Islam (arriving from Brunei-see Wolff 1976) was present in the Philippines as far north as Manila when the Spanish arrived, and not just in the southern regions as now. Catholicism has therefore replaced Islam in much of the Philippine lowlands. 15 A feature of the essay by Syed Hussein Alatas referred to earlier is his dis- cussion of the relative part played by imposition from above and acceptance from beneath in the initial spread of Southeast Asian Islam. Alatas (1964: 21-23) was of the opinion that the latter process was more important than historians had com- monly recognised. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 275 Weber identified for certain parts of early modern Europe. They see no conflict between following an other-worldly religion while being very this-worldly in their day-to-day affairs. In inland Central Java, however, orthodox Islam of this kind began making its entry only during the twentieth century. The variety of Islam that was present there before, and which is still practised by many, was greatly influenced by Sufism (Siddique 1977), which is often regarded as heretical by more orthodox Muslims, because it seeks to find God within oneself by such mystical means as fasting, chanting or trance. Sufis therefore tend to substitute a close personal relationship with their teacher for the more state-linked, sociocentric religion favoured by the orthodox. l6 These practices (known region- ally as tarekat) are sometimes declared heretical by governments in Muslim countries. But they are so similar to those of the supposedly indigenous Javanese mysticism known as Kebatinan (Mulder 1978) that we may suspect this to be the main reason for the easy syncretism espoused by the aristocratic (priYf.9ii) tradition of Central Java, which is more immanently inclined than the santri style. Given the political dominance of Javanese leaders in modern Indonesia, this is of more than passing interest. Anderson (1972), for example, has shown how Javanese notions of political power are still intermingled with mys- tical concerns. Sufic Islam also served as the favoured religious style at the Muslim courts in several parts of Southeast Asia (AI-Attas 1963, Siddique 1977, Milner 1981). This suggests-as other evidence tends to con- firm-that within these courts, even in the trading-state areas, a more immanentist mode of orientation, congruent with India-derived ideas about the divinity of kingship (such as the Devaraja idea), might have helped ease the transition to Islam. Only under the modern nation- state did Islam begin to take the more uniformlY transcendental shape it has today. The abangan peasants, however, remained peripheral to these devel- opments until recently, absorbing a few selected elements of Islam (as preached by charismatic travelling 'saints', many claiming descent 16 In the esoteric forms of Mahayana Buddhism that became popular in ninth- century Java and Sumatra, a similar stress was placed on the necessity for complete subordination to one's guru, an idea that may already have been present in sev- enth-century Srivijaya (John Miksic, personal communication). This implies an imma- nentist orientation to concrete interpersonal relations, rather than a transcendentalist orientation to institutions, as is typical of santri Islam (or Theravada Buddhism). 276 CHAPTER FOURTEEN from the Prophet) into a still functioning localistic animism. Regular prayer, fasting and the Pilgrimage were not normally part of their religious repertoire. Currently, however, many of them are now turn- ing towards the more mainstream varieties of Islam, in step with the more general modernisation of the country. Buddhism.: In the mainland, Theravada Buddhism was available through a connection with Ceylon, via the Mon people who lived in what is now southern Burma, central and south Thailand, and north- ern Peninsular Malaysia. When Thai-speaking ruling groups began to form centralised states from the thirteenth century onwards, in areas that had previously been linguistically and politically Mon or Khmer, they effectively 'colonised' the region through the transcendentalis- ing and state-incorporating agency of Theravada Buddhism. Similarly, in Burma: 'Oral legend has it that Anorahta, when he began the building of this shrine [Shwe Zigon, in Pagan], said, "Men will not come for the sake of the new faith [Theravada Buddhism]. Let them come for their old gods and gradually they will be won over." , (Keyes 1977: 72). Despite its non-theistic and depersonalising theol- ogy, canonical Theravada Buddhism in practice maintains a hierar- chical church-like organisation, founded on a formal dogma that must be accepted as an article of faith, serving thereby to tran- scendentalise the individual's consciousness. There are important differences of emphasis between Mahayana Buddhism and the Theravada Buddhism that replaced it. In Theravada, there is an established hierarchy in the degree of attainment of release from suffering: monks are at the top, ordinary males in the middle and women at the bottom. Salvation can be achieved only through being as like a monk as possible: celibate, ascetic, and not concerned with money. Ordinary members of society, concerned as they are with family life and the gaining of a livelihood, therefore have no hope of attaining salvation (nibbana). They will leave salvationist activities to the monks, who specialise in the highly esoteric and difficult Buddhist theology. The lay Buddhist deals instead with a simplified, 'merit' -seeking, version of the religion-with heaven or a good rebirth as the goal, rather than the personal extinction of nibbana (Obeyesekere 1968). This they do mainly through their support of the monks, who are organised into a national 'church' (the sangha), the hierarchy of which has, in Thailand especially, constituted a parallel civil service. So, despite the individualistic theology of Theravada Buddhism, in CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 277 practice it is a highly transcendental social religion, leading para- doxically to a socialised, hierarchical and politically embedded frame- work of action. Like Islam, therefore, Theravada Buddhism makes a 'good' religion for the organising of a hierarchical state. Mahayana Buddhism, on the other hand, has an important addi- tional element in its teaching, namely, the idea of the bodhisattva- an intermediate stage between ordinary secular life and the salvation of buddha-hood. A bodhisattva is one who, though within sight of bud- dha-hood, turns voluntarily away from it to help others achieve release from suffering. 17 Mahayana thus generates an individualistic framework of practical action, despite the social character of its teaching that Buddhists should help each other in attaining salvation. Everyone (male and f ~ m a l e alike) now has the chance of attaining salvation, and does not need to leave the management of religious affairs to other people-not even the monks and nuns. This is the form of Buddhism found in 'classical' Java (of which the Borobudur is the major mon- ument) and elsewhere in early Southeast Asia. But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as the region's state regimes became more extensive, Thai and Burman kings chose to replace Mahayana with the Theravada variety that had developed in Ceylon as the state religion centuries earlier. (In Cambodia the shift was from Hinduism to Theravada.) Thus, although Mahayana Buddhism made an excel- lent court religion, it was found to have too little elective affinity with broader hierarchical political structures when the time came to expand the power of the central authority into the wider popula- tion. For this task, Theravada proved much more attractive. Language The kinds of difference just discussed are reflected also in language- in the very structure of the different speech varieties. It is important to note that the significant differences are as likely to occur between different registers and sociolinguistic levels of the same language as between separate languages. Malay displays a considerable polyglossia of this kind. Even an advanced knowledge of standard Malay, which is structured within a quite transcendental frame of reference, pro- vides little basis for understanding the very different kind of Malay 17 This idea can also be found in Theravada Buddhism, but as an obscure ele- ment, whereas it is central to the Mahayana tradition. 278 CHAPTER FOURTEEN that Malays speak to each other in more domestic circumstances. A language embodying the transcendental mode of orientation might be expected to make constant reference to things lying outside of the immediate situation of utterance. True pronouns such as 'I' and 'you', for example, have no meaning except by reference to the speech act in which they are uttered. In Malay, the true pronouns, aku '1' and kau 'you', which textbooks say are too impolite for a foreigner to use, are' replaced in the formal varieties by the speakers' personal names (even in self-reference, for'!') or by a range of status terms created out of one's knowledge of the wider society, such as saya (etymologically 'slave') and encik (etymologically 'freeman'). This is done to an even greater degree in Thai, following the imposition of the Sakdina status system over the last few centuries. In the languages of the tribal societies of Southeast Asia, however, the true pronouns are used almost without restriction-as is the case too in the true colloquial Malay that Malays speak to each other. Here, reference beyond the immediate situation of utterance is avoided. Pronominal and address usage thus refers to two different contexts: the socio- centric (transcendental) and the egocentric (non-transcendental). A language can be raised beyond the colloquial level and made more formal by feeding sociocentric awareness into it. In the case of Malay this is done by employing a set of prefixes (me-, ber-, ter-, di-) and suffixes (-kan, -i) that indicate the transitivity or intransitiv- ity of relations between the referred-to participants (,Agent', 'Subject', 'Patient', etc.) outside of the immediate situation of utterance. In col- loquial Malay, however, these same affixes, if they are used at all, are given quite different meanings having to do with features of the event-with what happened, rather than with who did what to whom (Benjamin 1993, in press b). There are yet other ways of making languages more complicated. In some non-transcendental frameworks, situation-of-utterance fea- tures (i.e. shifters and deictics such as 'this', 'here', 'that'), which have no absolute meaning in themselves, are often made to do multiple duty in the grammar. A good example is that of Kawi (Becker and Oka 1974), the classical literary variety of Javanese that was written in earlier times (and is still cultivated to some extent today), when immanentism was at its height. Here, the structure of interpersonal relations was fed into the rest of the grammar, so that the difference between 'I' and 'you' or 'here' and 'there' became the basis for tense inflection (past vs. present) or discourse structure ('the former' vs. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 279 'the latter'). A similar tendency is present in Temiar, aMon-Khmer language spoken in typically tribal circumstances (Benjamin Ms(b)). There, morphological elements that appear in the pronoun system appear also in the inflection of verbs for grammatical voice (Active, Middle, Causative), the inflection of nouns for number (Singular, Plural) or role (Agent, Subject, Patient, Instrument), in the phonic shape of deictics, and in many other grammatical and lexical features. Thus, there is a tendency for the situation-of-utterance to invade the rest of the language in non-transcendental circumstances, and for the outside world to invade language in transcendental ones. These differences are amply illustrated in the languages of Southeast Asia. (To demonstrate this any further would require too technical a linguistic discussion for presentation here.) v The modem nation-state The modern nation-states of Southeast Asia are all 'secondary', declared into being literally overnight, and modelled on the already existing 'primary' nation-states of western Europe. They were formed initially out of a perceived legal necessity, namely, the establishing of relations with other states on a basis of equal standing within the already existing international system. Relations within these new nation- states were, at first, of less importance. (For the full argument, see Benjamin 1988.) The political leaders thus find themselves operating on a popula- tion whose mode of orientation is insufficiently transcendental for the people to pay any attention to the intended political message. (Or perhaps, as with some current religious movements in the region, the people are already transcendentalised towards some quite other goal than the nation-state.) The state's success within the international division of labour requires that the citizens should fulfil their role as a capitalist-industrial work force. This in turn requires the establishment of a modern educational system on a scale that only the state can organise, employing a modernised standardised national language as its medium. For this to work, the people should already be predis- posed to see these general principles as important. The necessary transcendentalisation is brought about by persuad- ing the population that their 'identity' is less than whole-that they 280 CHAPTER FOURTEEN have an 'identity crisis'. The concomitant 'search for identity' is thus something of a political confidence trick: it is hardly likely to make sense to people living in ordinary peasant or tribal circumstances, undisturbed by the modern state. Overt concern for 'identity' most typically arises-or is invented-when a modern state is being formed. Governments, especially in Southeast Asia, do this by playing upon cultural issues in such a way as to imply that people's identity is incomplete, and that they are therefore not whole human beings. They can be made whole only when they define their identity in terms of some criteria that the central government will give them. Thus, for example, a transcendental and intellectualised religion (such as ortho- dox Islam in Malaysia, mainstream Catholic Christianity in the Philip- pines, or reformed Theravada Buddhism in Thailand and Burma) will be given the state's support, and be made into an element of social 'identity'. Ethnicity, which is not usually an issue in pre-modem circumstances, will similarly be used to fit people into slots, based on an array of labels provided or sanctioned by the government. In their different ways, all the countries of Southeast Asia provide examples of this. 18 The engineering of language allegiance (in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and other countries) through the propagation of standardised forms and the suppressing of other varieties, also forms a major component of the newer ways of regulating people's lives. (For a detailed study of such language engineering, see Smalley 1994 on Thailand.) The people most likely to respond to such an engineering of their 'identity crises' are those who are already inclined to a more tran- scendental mode of orientation, through experiences of the kind already discussed. Where modernisation and state-formation are just beginning, such people are more likely to be found among the peas- ants than among the tribal portions of the population (though there is nothing absolute about this distinction). The tribal people are more likely to greet this kind of politico-cultural manipulation with scep- ticism, not to say cynicism. In fact, they usually do not fully understand what is being said to them, because they have not had the kind of experience that could give such rhetoric any meaning. But once they 18 E t ~ n i c i ~ is not a description of people's cultural background-as sociologists often misleadingly teach-but a form of social action aimed at fitting oneself into a slot provided by one's government or by some other political agent. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 281 are incorporated into the modern economic network, through the commodification of their productive activities, tribespeople too come to recognise that their lives are now influenced more by factors lying outside their own community than by purely local issues. They then begin-as individuals, not whole communities-to transcendentalise their mode of orientation. An example of this occurred among the T emiars of Peninsular Malaysia, whose animistic religion had been the subject of my PhD thesis in the 1960s. In the mid-1970s, several young Temiars went to Kuala Lumpur and sought instruction in the highly transcendental Baha'i religion (historically a derivative of Islam, but otherwise an autonomous religion), which they then set about propagating in their own communities. For several years, they had been witnessing the opening up of their territory, mostly through outsider-run commercial logging of the area. The children had also received elementary gov- ernment-provided schooling for some 20 years, which had allowed a degree of (Malay-language) literacy to emerge. They had been receiv- ing medical treatment, and some cash income from odd jobs. In other words, many of the Temiars had been transcendentalising their consciousness of the world, where previously they normally took a dialectical approach. They had also been exposed to the Malaysian government's own transcendentalising radio broadcasts urging citi- zens to have an ugama, a named religion-of-the-book. The intention, of course, was that the Temiars should embrace Islam, but their response was unexpected. Having found the explanations of Islam offered to them by local Malays to be incomprehensible, and the prayers to be couched in an exotic language (Arabic), they elected instead for Baha'i, a similarly monotheistic and transcendental reli- gion, but one that used the national language (Malay) and which had an explicit, rationally ordered catechism. 19 (For a detailed account see Benjamin, in press a: Chapter 1.) Social personaliry As already noted, persons operating within a transcendental mode of orientation are less likely to have a solidly felt core of 'self' than 19 There have since been further religious changes among the Temiars, includ- ing a waning of allegiance to Baha'i, coupled with the emergence of self-consciously nativistic cults based on a widening of the terms of reference of the earlier medi- umistic practices. 282 CHAPTER FOURTEEN persons operating in a non-transcendental mode. 20 Where the transcend- ental mode is long established, people are more likely to be reliant on external sanctions than on internal ones as the basis for their actions. Typically, as mentioned above, there will be such a degree of political control, codification and policing of social action, that people will come to think of their actions as being organised by agencies outside them- selves. By the same token, people will come to believe that external, rather than internal, factors are to blame when they suffer disease or some other misfortune. This often goes along with a tendency to indulge in accusations of the kind that anthropologists usually class as witchcraft. This refers to the ascription of one's own misfortunes to the evil intentions, dissatisfactions or jealousy of other individuals in the community, or to other ethnic groups, or (if animistic ally inclined) to attack by spirits. Now, this characterisation fits most of the lowland peasant populations of Southeast Asia, such as Burmans, Malays and Cebuanos, very well (Spiro 1967, Lieban 1967, Watson & Ellen 1993). In such communities there is a constant blaming of misfortune on other people or agencies, rather than on one's own actions or propensities: the frame of mind is somewhat 'paranoiac' in its tendencies. 21 In the non-transcendental modes, on the other hand, the personality is founded on a solid (but unspoken, and usually unspeakable-of) core of self. One's consciousness is not constantly being directed towards what others are doing, or to what they say one should be doing. It is directed instead to one's own actions and to the immediate con- text of those actions. Sanctions for behaviour are internalised, and any sickness or other personal affliction suffered will be thought of as due to one's own behaviour or constitution, rather than to the actions of other people or spirits.22 20 This is not negated by the tendency in transcendental regimes for people to talk explicitly of their 'true seif'-as in Malay batin, or English 'the real me'-for the solidly felt is precisely that which remains tacit and difficult to speak of. The process of making-tacit, however, is at base a consequence of hegemonic political action. 21 Consider also the examples of latah and amuk, the two main indigenous idioms for handling personality disorder in Malay culture. Both afflictions can be consid- ered as ways of dealing with the strain of a social framework where one is con- stantly 'on stage' and in thrall to others. In latah the solution comes through giving oneself over, wholly and imitatively, to 'other', by completely suppressing one's own personality. But in amuk, the sufferer attempts to obviate the problem of 'others' by physically removing them from the scene. 22 Matters are much more complicated than stated here. This is one place in the argument where it is unsafe to fuse the dialectical and immanent modes of ori- entation under the same 'non-transcendental' rubric. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 283 To help understand this better, consider the widespread (tran- scendental) Malay fear that 'wind invasion' (masuk angin) from outside will lead to harm (Laderman 1988).23 This contrasts directly with the (immanentist) Chinese idea that harm comes from losing the wind that should remain inside the body! Or consider another contrast, between the Malays and some of the neighbouring tribal (Orang Asli) groups: the former are inclined to hold that disease results either from spirit attack or from acts of sorcery performed on them by others (most frequently their in-laws), rather than from anything they have done themselves. Typically, however, Temiars or Semais in the same situation will hold (dialectically) that suffering is caused by one's own actions: mixing up the proper food categories, not sharing goods and food with others, laughing at butterflies, and so on. If things get so bad that the Thunder deity (Karey) decides to erupt right over- head, then those who feel they were to blame might offer up a lit- tle blood cut from their own shin, in admission of guilt and in appeasement. These differences do not relate solely to disease ideas, for they also permeate social and inter-personal relations. In social situations framed in the transcendental mode, there is a constant cultivating of social relations through etiquette, frequently taking the form of generalised, but obligatory, joking relationships of the kind that anthro- pologists have long recognised as covering up an underlying ambiva- lence. This transcendentalising of social action is very typical of most, though not all, lowland Southeast Asian societies. Even the most triv- ial encounter with someone whom you know well must be marked by an interactive acknowledgement of this kind. Individuals constantly monitor what others are doing to them, just as they monitor others for clues as to how their own behaviour is affecting those others. Paradoxically, this detailed prescribing of how people should inter- act rather interferes with the development of deeper inter-personal relations. In this mode of interaction the constant defining of the self as against others means that the self's identity is actually other- derived. People operating in such a social-psychological frame more easily fall prey to those who claim to have an 'identity' to offer. (Modem 23 Although this is an animistic conception, rather than an Islamic one, I showed many years ago (Benjamin 1979) that the Malay animistic system displayed an ori- entational pattern congruent with that of Islam. (In that study, however, I did not employ the term transcendental.) 284 CHAPTER FOURTEEN consumerist culture, which has become an ever-present component of contemporary city life in Southeast Asia, plays on this theme too.) As already mentioned, this is precisely how the governments of the new states of Southeast Asia work at turning the consciousness of their peasant populations towards the political centre. (They try the same tack too with their tribal populations, but here they frequently meet with much less success, for reasons already hinted at.) The degree to which people respond to this kind of mass social engineering varies with the extent to which their consciousness is already transcenden- talised through prior historical process. The most positive response will come from those who have some kind of 'identity crisis' already built in to their social framework. However, those who are living in the more face-to-face, relatively remote communal situations are less likely to suffer from a prior 'identity crisis', precisely because in prac- tice their identity is constructed with respect to the same people from day to day. But if such people move out of this situation, by migrat- ing to town or joining the army, for example, they lose that constancy of other-reference. Lacking internalised sanctions for their actions, and recognising little that is familiar in their new environment, they are relatively easy prey to 'identity' -mongers-though these may not be of the kind that the government approves of. If riots break out, these are typically the people who commit the violence, and who might well be suspected of, for example, the killing of Vietnamese boat-people refugees that occurred in the Gulf of Thailand in the late 1970s, or in the streets of Kuala Lumpur in 1969. The Khmer Rouge guaranteed a ready supply of such people in the 1970s by physically relocating the whole population of Cambodian. (This removal from 'home' circumstances is an example of the profound consequences that exogeny has on social life; see Benjamin Ms(a).) In the non-transcendental modes (both immanent and dialectical), however, social relations are taken for granted, and are not treated as requiring a moment-to-moment constructing of one's identity. More- over, social relations are usually a c ~ ~ e d only when necessary, lacking the obligatory character just commented on for the transcendental mode. 24 Sometimes, one need not say anything at all. Among the 2' In most (all?) of the Southeast Asian languages spoken in transcendental cul- tural regimes, 'Hello' translates as 'Have you eaten yet?' or '\'\There are you going?'- exchanges with no serious informational content, but none the less obligatory for all that. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 285 Temiars, for example, when newly arriving in a village it is consid- ered bad manners to speak until you have sat silently for ten minutes or more. Chinese styles of interaction typically do not require verbal exchange, unless there is some information to be imparted. The same appears to be true of some sections of Javanese society: there, politicians often deploy silence as a sign of their power. In these instances, one's empirical self is well founded-but tacitly so, and by a variety of means-and is constantly meeting social others on the same terms. One's unspoken identity is derived from the very concrete closed set of relations that one enters into locally. Such individuals are not eas- ily swayed by others' offers of an explicit, but imagined, 'identity'. These face-to-face interactional features are replicated at the mass level too, in political contexts. In Malaysia, for example, Malays and Chinese engage in contrasting modes of political discussion-or at least they did so in the late 1970s, when I first sketched a very early version of this paper. The typical Malay argument, when trying to do something about their socio-economic situation at the political party level, was to say that it is others who must change. Only a few Malays have dared to assert that it is the Malays themselves who should change, and these have usually been individuals who were not wholly indigenous with respect to Malay ethnicity-and who could there- fore look on the Malays in general as a kind of 'other'. The recently retired Prime Minister of Malaysia is one who has proposed such arguments; his own book (Mahathir 1970), urging Malays to remake themselves was, significantly, banned in Malaysia until some years after he attained the premiership. The Malaysian Chinese political parties, on the other hand, typically claimed that it is the Chinese themselves who must change; the bickering at their party congresses was internally directed. In both the Malay and Chinese cases, these differences in political orientation are directly congruent with the different interactional styles just discussed. Modem times in ancient perspective There is a large literature on the sacred polities of early Southeast Asia, and even today many Javanese and Cambodians seem to operate more from an immanentist mode of orientation than from a tran- scendental one. The sorts of horrors that have occurred in recent years in Cambodia have happened before in that country's history- though presumably with less efficient cruelty. The population certainly 286 CHAPTER FOURTEEN came under coercion in earlier times: how could the huge assemblage of Angkorian monuments have been built except by moving extra workers in from elsewhere? The same can be asked of the way in which labour was provided for the building of Pagan, Central Burma, where over 10,000 temples were built in just two centuries. On the other hand, such populations could hardly have undertaken such tasks unless, to some extent, they wanted to. (This is the puzzling problem that Marx discussed as 'the Asiatic mode of production'.) But what does this mean for modern times? Is it possible that the Khmer Rouge'S declaration that the state completely overrides its human content has a heightened elective affinity with the immanent mode of orientation-despite the fact that this idea was apparently first articulated in a PhD thesis written for the University of Paris? Is it possible that ordinary Cambodians could, in some part of their consciousness, have thought the idea to be reasonable, while at the same time regarding the suffering it caused as beyond reason? And what of the revival (or continuance?) of massive forced labour in public projects and military operations in contemporary Burma?- where shops are ordered not to sell publications on Mahayana Buddhism, and where it is unwise for scholars to say what they know of the Mahayanist elements present in earlier Burmese history.25 This approach is not without problems, however. Historically, the Cambodian state has had a more immanentist history than most Southeast Asian polities, despite the period of French rule. The Khmer Rouge leaders declared themselves to be 'Communists', which might predispose us to think that their consciousness was shaped in accord with that most transcendentally eschatological secular reli- gion. But they clearly were not Communists in any ordinary sense of the term, for the background of Khieu Sampan, Pol Pot and their colleagues was a peculiar mixture of traditional Cambodian aristocracy (of part Chinese descent) and an idealistic socialism picked up during their studies in Paris. (They were therefore doubly 'exogenous'.) For them the state was prior to all else. But this was not the modern nation-state, struggling to homogenise a socially heterogeneous citizenry 25 This became apparent on one of my visits to Burma, in 1994. Burma is prob- lematical in terms of the ideas presented in this essay, for it appears to combine a rather immanentist approach to state-maintenance, but through the imposition of the normally transcendental Theravada form of Buddhism. There is no room to discuss this issue further here. CONSCIOUSNESS AND POLITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 287 so that they could playa role in the industrial world. Rather, they were in thrall to the state as a kind of sacred object: if the state was in good health, all would be well with everyone else. Despite the horrors they caused, I suggest that the Khmer Rouge view of the state might have seemed somehow more reasonable--though certainly not, in practice, acceptable-to Cambodians than it would to the populations of most other parts of Southeast Asia, simply because of its heightened elective affinity to the immanentist mode of orienta- tion long established there. Is it possible that the large-scale killings which erupted in Java and Bali in 1965 might have had a similar background? Many observers have been puzzled at the apparently sudden conversion of 'peaceful' Javanese and Balinese to violently homicidal actions-and back again. In modern Indonesia, (Central) Javanese culture has been politically dominant until very recently. The problem is that the rest of Indonesia, with the partial exception of Bali, has had a very different consciousness-history, and the people do not readily find Javanese ways of thinking easy to comprehend. The presence of secessionist movements in parts of Timor, Sulawesi, Maluku and Sumatra, may have something to do with this, for they are all areas where transcendentalist coastal trading-states or colonial-response states existed in pre-modern times. 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