Southeast Asia: Table of Contents
Organizer: Barbara Watson Andaya, University of Hawaii
Chair: Lorraine Gesick, University of Nebraska, Omaha
Discussant: Shelly Errington, University of California, Santa Cruz
Feminist historiography has argued that the development of the state had lasting consequences for gender relationships, regardless of the society concerned. In contemporary Southeast Asia, work on gender has tended to support the argument that in general the position of local women was adversely affected by the intrusion of the state, the spread of world religions, and the expansion of a capitalist economy. In a field where the "high status" of women in "traditional" society is part of received wisdom, such research has been largely conducted without the benefit of detailed studies by historians. This panel seeks to open up discussion by examining the historical processes by which specific states constructed and fostered conceptions of gender. Employing separate lines of inquiry, each contributor focuses on a particular society or societies to show how the state was instrumental in creating and promoting models of gender relations. These models were prescriptive rather than descriptive, and their application was always contingent on context. Since requirements and expectations from the state did not affect the dealings between and among men and women in Southeast Asia in any uniform way, generalizations across the region remain problematic. Nonetheless, these four contributions demonstrate that the state has played a critical role in delineating the spaces and identifying the behaviors appropriate for women and men of different social ranks and in different cultural-ethnic communities.
An anthropologist has been deliberately selected as discussant for this panel. Her comments will serve as a reminder of the mutually profitable interdisciplinary conversation that has been so important in Southeast Asian studies and that will be vital as we begin to explore the history of gender in the region.
John K. Whitmore, University of Michigan
This paper examines the ways in which the early modern political form, the "state," affected the pattern of gender relations in Vietnam. Using the state of Dai Viet in what is now northern Vietnam, it will show how an emerging group of males, the literati, acted both to advance this political form and to define the female role in Vietnamese society by bringing the male role to the fore, by legitimizing this role through law, and by utilizing the state in making these changes.
In Vietnam, the literati worked to advance the state’s political, economic, and cultural integration by strengthening the central government, pushing forward economic development, and promoting Confucianist orthodoxy. Historical evidence shows that women in Vietnam played an active role both ritually and politically, a pattern which attracted criticism from the Vietnamese literati who emphasized the moral correctness of their present and argued against the actions of the past. From the 15th century to the early 19th, literati scholars such as Ngo Si Lien (15th century), Ngo Thi Si and Le Quy Don (18th century), and Phan Huy Chu (early 19th century) put forward their views on proper gender relationships and argued for the active involvement of the state as a means of reshaping expectations for appropriate female roles. By examining the ways in which the early modern "state" acted on the fluidity and ambivalence that contributed to cultural and contextual understandings of gender, studies of Southeast and East Asia can advance the discussion and understanding of gender history in our modern and interactive world.
Barbara Watson Andaya, University of Hawaii
In Southeast Asia the period from about 1500 onwards saw a steady growth of political centers under male rulers. In this context the possession of many women was an essential ingredient for the manifestation of royal authority, an idea reinforced by largely imported notions of the "good" woman as one who remained hidden from the public eye.
The availability of data dealing with court life holds out possibilities of investigating the ways in which women in elite circles dealt with the seclusion imposed by the women’s quarters. To some extent the hierarchies of the outside world were retained, but in this restricted domain there was still a range of opportunities which inhabitants of the "women’s quarters" could exploit.
This paper seeks to examine how the evolving patriarchal state in island Southeast Asia defined and engendered the spaces in which women attached to the upper classes could move, and the degree of compliance and contestation associated with these restrictions. While apparently emphasizing female subservience to males, seclusion could encourage initiative and enterprise as women sought to bypass or subvert restrictions in order to ensure security and well-being for themselves and their relatives. This hidden female world could also provide its own incentives for personal creativity and much of what we know as "court culture" was the product of an environment where women were active performers and often the primary audience.
Norman Owen, University of Hong Kong
From the 16th century onward, the Spanish Catholic state imposed "Mary and Misogyny" on the colonial Philippines. In the 19th century the official subordination of women weakened somewhat, though it was rarely challenged directly. Filipino nationalism began to assert its own version of machismo, in which patriotic young women (like Rizal’s "Maria Clara") were supposed to become brave wives and mothers of manly heroes.
In this period, the colonial state became more interventionist, and a number of its "development" measures affected women, in particular the regulation of industrial labor and the professions, and the expansion of schooling for girls after the educational reforms of 1863. Meanwhile, capitalism was transforming Philippine society. The rise of export agriculture increased the demand for female labor, the growth of commerce involved many women in marketing, and the influx of cheap foreign textiles began to drive women out of weaving. Urbanization created new opportunities for women, as cigar-makers, maids, shopkeepers, and prostitutes. The city was also where upper-class women were introduced to Western fashions. Still to be explored are the gender implications of an apparent lowering of the age at marriage and an archipelago-wide pattern of migration to new "frontiers."
Thus the lives of many Filipinos were transformed by their responses to opportunities and problems created by capitalism, although official patriarchy was rarely confronted openly. Women made the best of their situation, supported the state (or the revolution) quietly, and continued to be mainstays of the church. "Maria Clara," however, remained more an ideal type than a reflection of Filipina reality.
Tamara Loos, Cornell University
Beginning in the mid-1800s, elites in Siam introduced a modern legal system and codes that rearranged relations among the population, the bureaucracy, and the monarch. The purpose of introducing a modern legal system with centralized judicial power was two-fold: it helped stave off direct and comprehensive colonization by foreign powers; and it became a tool used by the monarchy to control those who posed a serious threat to the King’s authority. Law was not necessarily introduced to provide rights, protections, and responsibilities to individuals, but to limit the privileges wielded by bureaucrats, whose numbers were growing exponentially during this period. The new judicial order increased the number of opportunities for the state to intervene in the lives of people. I am specifically interested in examining when the state, through the newly created position of public prosecutor, stepped in to protect "the People," a category whose members were treated according to their gender and status. I argue that the category of rasadon or "the People" was created in opposition to officialdom and was employed to control the new power of bureaucrats. Furthermore, during the period under examination the law constructed concepts of public space and public interest, which were juxtaposed, however silently, to ill-defined private space and interests. Public space became the province of public prosecutors who began to protect rasadon injured in "public" areas. Invariably, the power of public prosecution operated along lines of gender and status.