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Since the launch of the BRI, particular modes of movement are integral to its vision of what it means to be a modern world citizen. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Southeast Asia, where China-backed infrastructure projects expand, and at great speed. Such infrastructure projects are carriers of particular versions of modernity, promising rapid mobility to populations better connected than ever before. Yet, until now, little attention has been paid to how mobility and promises of mobility intersect with local understandings of development. In the introduction to this special issue, we argue that it is essential to think about the role infrastructure plays in forms of development that place connectivity at the center. We suggest that considering development, mobility and mo-dernity together is enlightening because it interrogates the connections between these interlocking themes. Through an introduction to five ethnographically grounded papers and two commentaries, all of which engage with infrastructures in different contexts throughout Southeast Asia, we demonstrate that there are significant gaps between of-ficial policy and lived experience. This makes the need to interrogate what infrastructure, mobilities, and global China really mean all the more pressing.
In the ongoing 21st century, low- and middle-income countries will face two health challenges that are thoroughly different from what these countries have been dealing with in preceding centuries. First, they are confronted with surging rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and second, climate change will take its toll and is predicted to cause catastrophic health impairments and exacerbate chronic health conditions further. Both will pose a disproportionate health and economic burden on low- and middle-income countries, which are also the countries least able to cope with them. By threatening individual health and socioeconomic improvements, and by putting an immense burden on already constrained health care systems, they impede the progress in poverty reduction and widen health inequities between the rich and the poor.
Against this background, this thesis investigates the potential of NCD prevention and treatment measures in the context of Southeast Asia, with case studies in Indonesia. Specifically, it seeks to understand what kind of health interventions have the potential to be (cost-)effective considering the cultural background, lifestyle, health literacy and health system capacities in the region. Further, this thesis analyzes the interplay between NCDs and climate change and assesses the financial burden that both might pose in the decades to come. Hence, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of how the two health challenges of the 21st century, NCDs and climate change, can be addressed in the context of Southeast Asia and offers insights into what type of health policies and interventions can play a supportive role.
This study examines the dynamics which lead to revitalization of everyday life in the public spaces of Cagayan de Oro, a medium-sized urban center in Northern Mindanao, the Philippines. By employing the oriental philosophies together with western thoughts such as Henri Lefebvre, Alain Touraine and Jürgen Habermas, this study elucidates that the core of perceived, lived and conceived spaces is ‘the Subject.’ Once the Subject utilizes the public sphere to instill social action, social space is ultimately produced. Hawkers, grassroots environmental activists, street readers and artists are the social Subjects who partake in the vibrancy of public spaces. The social Subjects utilize public spaces as venues of social transformation. Thus, this study argues that the social Subjects’ role in democratic process lead to inclusivity of the marginalized sector in the public spaces of the city.
The focus of this study is a single manuscript in a Tai Nuea village near Mueang Sing in northwestern Laos, copied in 1935 and entitled Pukthanusati (Pali buddhānussati) ‘the Recollection of the Buddha.’ It is written in the Tai Nuea language and Lik Tho Ngok or ‘Bean Sprout’ script, and is in the form of a jātaka or narrative story of a former lifetime of the Buddha, the most popular genre for recitation. The thesis examines the lay manuscript culture of which it is a part and the language and orthography of its contents, and then provide a phonemic transcription and annotated English translation of the text together a complete glossary of terms and images of the manuscript.
The detailed study of this one manuscript is used as an entry point for a broader investigation of Lik manuscript culture as found in Mueang Sing today, including the distinct roles of the Lik and Tham orthographies, scribal vocation, manuscript production, uses and functions, and the contents of the texts. The Pukthanusati text is then the basis for examination of phonological aspects of language use in the recitation of Lik manuscript literature and the historical context of the dialect’s phonemes as well as Burmese and Indic forms occurring as loanwords. The Lik Tho Ngok orthography is also placed in context through an overview of its historical development, including possible prototypes and phonological influences, the twentieth century reforms of some traditional orthographies and the question of orthographic depth. The Lik Tho Ngok orthography as found in the manuscript studied is then described in detail, with tables and accompanying notes illustrating the inventories of consonant and vowel glyphs, consonant clusters, ligatures and special orthographic forms, use of subscripts and superscripts, numerals, punctuation, and the Tai Nuea spelling system. The phonemic transcription and annotated English translation of the text illustrate the rhyming structure and other features of specialised language use in Lik manuscript culture.
The Tai Nuea and a number of closely related Tai groups have generally been overlooked in the field of Buddhist Studies. The study of this manuscript culture therefore contributes to our understanding of local practices on the northern periphery of Theravāda Buddhist influence in mainland Southeast Asia in addition to responding to an urgent need to examine and document this endangered scribal tradition and it specialised use of language and orthography.