The Indian-Derived Law Texts of Southeast Asia

1978 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. B. Hooker
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Social Condition ◽  
Important Class ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Law Texts

The aim of this paper is to outline the characteristics of one very important class of Southeast Asian law texts—the “Indian-derived.” In the process, it may be possible to throw light on some basic questions such as the nature of State, and the definition of sovereignty in medieval Southeast Asia. The texts are important examples of the adaptation of Indian legal culture in new environments. I hope to show that the idea of law exhibited in the texts, while dependent upon such basic Indian ideas as “duty” (dharma), is not only differently defined in the various cultures of “Indianized” Southeast Asia but transcends such limited legal definitions as “rules” or “coercion.” Law instead rests upon native concepts, giving rise to rules of conduct that ought, to be observed by reason of social condition. It is among these rules that law is to be found; law is an aspect of dharma, the definition of which varies from one law text to another. It is ultimately concerned with a definition of obligation that is simultaneously suitable in local terms and consonant with absolute principles derived from the Indian texts.

scholarly journals Southeast Asian History and the Mediterranean Analogy

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Multidisciplinary Approach ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
External Influence ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Asian History ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Conceptual Confusion

Historians of Southeast Asia have been inspired by Fernand Braudel's classic The Mediterranean because of its focus on the sea and multidisciplinary approach, and because it seems to solve two recalcitrant historiographical problems: the definition of time and space, and the reconciliation of local identities and external influence. But while Braudel's prose and intellectual ambition are justly seen as inspiring, conceptual confusion and analytic evasion limit his contribution.

Thinking Inside and Outside of the Circle of Kings: Reflections on the Comparative and Performative Practice of Southeast Asian Studies

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-100
Author(s):  
Michael Salman
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Institutional Issues ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractEvaluations of the success, viability, and future of Southeast Asian studies in the United States have long been characterized by pessimism, and also by a set of deeply rooted assumptions about what an area studies programme is supposed to be and what it requires to be successful. These assumptions concern not just institutional issues, but conceptions of what makes a region a proper unit for scholarly analysis, conceptions that invariably hinge on explicit or implicit comparisons to other regions. In this essay, I reverse the gaze of such evaluations by turning some of O.W. Wolter's classic notions about Southeast Asian cultures back upon the practice of Southeast Asianists, and by reversing some of the comparisons that are often used to demarcate Southeast Asia as both as distinctive region and a distinctively weak subject for successful area studies. Rather than accept such abstract and a priori notions about what Southeast Asian studies must be and what must be wrong with it, I propose instead a much more expansive, inclusive, and flexible definition of the field based upon the way it is practised in particular places and times. Such a performative model of Southeast Asian studies can take students, pedagogy, diaspora, and diverse transnational flows into account, while emphasizing all the more the importance of Southeast Asia as a field of scholarly and institutional collaboration.

The Islamic City: Melaka to Jogjakarta, c. 1500–1800

1986 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Kathirithamby-Wells
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Significant Feature ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Gradual Evolution ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City

The concept of the city as religious centre, administrative capital and economic pivot for a society, state or kingdom, expressed in the Islamic concept of madina (Gibbs and Kramers 1961: 291; Lapidus 1969: 69) pre-dates Muslim influence in Southeast Asia. The physical as well as functional characteristics of the Southeast Asian city, deriving from its urban features, as distinct from its rural surroundings, were a culmination of gradual evolution since the rise, about the middle of the second century A.D., of the first trading ports and cities. The distinction between the city as urban centre and its rural surroundings is attested in the traditional Javanese view of the negara. In the fourteenth century Nawanatya the negara is defined as ‘all where one can go out (of his compound) without passing through paddy fields’ (Pigeaud 1960, 3: 121). It is by virtue of their evolutionary origins through their total symbiosis with the surrounding rural peripheries that Middle-Eastern and Southeast Asian cities, even pre-dating Islam, contrasted significantly with the cities of Medieval Christendom with formally constituted municipal laws and corporate institutions (Hourani 1970: 15).1 The pre-eminence of cities in their composite role as capitals for religious, political and economic activity was a significant feature of the historical evolution of pre-modern Southeast Asia and will constitute the definition of a city within the purview of this survey.

Deliberation, Southeast Asian Local Wisdom in Resolving Disputes

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-58
Author(s):  
Rahdiansyah Rahdiansyah ◽  
Yulia Nizwana
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Important Thing ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
The People ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Asian People

Cultural disputes, and others, often occur between neighboring countries in Southeast Asia and can be the seeds of disharmony, of course, this is not desirable. Southeast Asia as a cultural scope that is interrelated in history, has local wisdom in resolving disputes, resolving this dispute is known as deliberation. Deliberation is an identity that must be prioritized as a wise cultural approach for the ASEAN community. The purpose of this study is to explore the local wisdom of Southeast Asian people in resolving disputes in their communities and implementing them as a solution for the ASEAN community. Recognizing each other as cultural origins often occur between Malaysian and Indonesian communities. As a nation of the same family, this is commonplace, but the most important thing is how to solve it. Interviewing the people of both countries is the first thing to do in looking at this problem, how they understand and see culture in their culture. Questionnaires are distributed as much as possible, each data obtained will be processed and classified according to nationality, education, age, and others. The findings will be a study to see the perspectives of the two countries in understanding history, culture, and cultural results in addressing the differences of opinion that occur. At least the description of the root of the problem is obtained, why this problem occurs, what are the main causes, how to understand it, how to react to it, and lead to the resolution of the dispute over ownership of culture itself

Premises, Policies and Multilateral Whitewashing of Broad Security Doctrines: A Southeast Asia-Based Critique of “Non-traditional” Security

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2019) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Delphine Allès
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Policy Transformation ◽  
Semantic Evolution

This article highlights the formulation of comprehensive conceptions of security in Indonesia, Malaysia and within the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), well before their academic conceptualisation. These security doctrines have been the basis of the consolidation of state and military apparatuses in the region. They tend to be overlooked by analyses praising the recent conversion of Southeast Asian political elites to the “non-traditional security”? agenda. This latter development is perceived as a source of multilateral cooperation and a substitute for the hardly operationalisable concept of human security. However, in the region, non-traditional security proves to be a semantic evolution rather than a policy transformation. At the core of ASEAN’s security narrative, it has provided a multilateral anointing of “broad” but not deepened conceptions of security, thus legitimising wide-ranging socio-political roles for the armed forces.

The Costs of Regularization in Southeast Asia

Contexts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-25
Author(s):  
Maryann Bylander
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Global South ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
The State ◽  
Asian Context

In the Southeast Asian context, legal status is ambiguous; it enlarges some risks while lessening others. As is true in many contexts across the Global South, while documentation clearly serves the interest of the state by offering them greater control over migrant bodies, it is less clear that it serves the goals, needs, and well-being of migrants.

scholarly journals Postcolonial International Law Discourses on Regional Developments in South and Southeast Asia

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane A. Desierto
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
South And Southeast Asia ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
International Legal System

The development of international law in South and Southeast Asia exemplifies myriad ideological strands, historical origins, and significant contributions to contemporary international law doctrines’ formative and codification processes. From the beginnings of South and Southeast Asian participation in the international legal order, international law discourse from these regions has been thematicallypostcolonialand substantivelydevelopment-oriented.Postcolonialism in South and Southeast Asian conceptions of international law is an ongoing dialectical project of revisioning international legal thought and its normative directions — towards identifying, collocating, and applying South and Southeast Asian values and philosophical traditions alongside the Euro-American ideologies that, since the classical Post-Westphalian era, have largely infused the content of positivist international law. Of increasing necessity to the intricacies of the postmodern international legal system and its institutions is how the postcolonial project of South and Southeast Asian international legal discourse focuses on areas of international law that create the most urgent development consequences: trade, investment, and the international economic order; the law of the sea and the environment; international humanitarian law, self-determination, socio-economic and cultural human rights.

‘Strangers’ and ‘stranger-kings’: The sayyid in eighteenth-century maritime Southeast Asia

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Charismatic Leadership ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
Asian State ◽  
Political Challenge ◽  
Western Expansion

Sayyidi ‘strangers’ and ‘stranger-kings’, borne on the eighteenth-century wave of Hadhrami migration to the Malay-Indonesian region, boosted indigenous traditions of charismatic leadership at a time of intense political challenge posed by Western expansion. The extemporary credentials and personal talents which made for sāda exceptionalism and lent continuity to Southeast Asian state-making traditions are discussed with particular reference to Perak, Siak and Pontianak. These case studies, representative of discrete sāda responses to specific circumstances, mark them out as lead actors in guiding the transition from ‘the last stand of autonomies’ to a new era of pragmatic collaboration with the West.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document