Water in the Study of Southeast Asia
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper advocates the use of a water perspective in the study of Southeast Asia. Such a perspective, it is argued, is multidimensional and complex, and incorporates an understanding of the physical characteristics of water, the transformations it undergoes through human intervention, and the sociocultural meaning that is applied to it by individual human communities. Moreover, water is a generic term that refers to a variety of types (salt, fresh, brackish, land-water) and forms (oceans, seas, straits, estuaries, rivers, lakes, ponds, reservoirs, canals). By citing examples across the world, this paper proposes the study of the differing combinations of types and forms of water in order to gain a greater precision of its role in Southeast Asia. At the heart of the water approach is the understanding that a body water should be studied as an equal partner to the human community. By examining the dynamic interaction of these two elements, important connectivities and new spatialisations based on water could greatly enhance our understanding of society. The seas, oceans, the littoral, and other forms and types of water are all understudied and deserve renewed attention if we are to find new ways of thinking and learning about Southeast Asia’s past, present and even its future.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Ammarell, G. 1999. Bugis navigation (Monograph 48). New Haven: Yale Southeast Asian Studies.
Andaya, B.W. 1993. Cash cropping and upstream-downstream tensions: The case of Jambi in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Southeast Asia in the early modern era: Trade, power, and belief, ed. A. Reid, 91–122. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
. 2016. Rivers, oceans and spirits: Water cosmologies, gender, and religious change in Southeast Asia. TRaNS (Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia) 4(2): 239–263. https://doi.org/10.1017/trn.2016.2
Andaya, L.Y. 2016. The social value of elephant tusks and bronze drums among certain societies in eastern Indonesia. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 172(1): 66–89. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134379-17201001 . Forthcoming. World of the southern Malays. In Performing Malay in a small island world: Otodidak artists and the politics of identity in Indonesia’s Riau archipelago, ed. M. Kartomi. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.
Arps, B. 2018. Dronas betrayal and Bima’s brutality: Javanaiserie in Malay culture. In Traces of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in Javanese and Malay literature, eds. Ding Choo Ming and W. van der Molen, 58–98. Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
Bentley, J.R., Bridenthal, R. and Wigen, K. 2007. Seascapes: Maritime histories, littoral cultures, and transoceanic exchanges. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Braudel, F. 1987. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II (vol. 2). London: Fontana Press.
Bronson, B. 1977. Exchange at the upstream and downstream ends: Notes toward a functional model of the coastal state in Southeast Asia. In Economic exchange and social interaction in Southeast Asia: Perspectives from prehistory, history, and ethnography, ed. K. Hutterer, 39–52. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies.
Calò, A. 2009. The distribution of bronze drums in early Southeast Asia: Trade routes and cultural spheres.
British Archaeological Reports (BAR) International Series 1913, Oxford: Archaeopress.
Capistrano-Baker, F.H. 1994. Art of island Southeast Asia: The Fred and Rita Richman collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Castle, J. and Murakami, A. 1991. Water rights. In Native Hawaiian rights handbook, ed. M.K. MacKenzie, 149–172. Honolulu: Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation.
Christie, J.W. 1992. Water from the ancestors: Irrigation in early Java and Bali. In The gift of water: Water management, cosmology and the state in South East Asia, ed. J. Rigg, 7–25. London: SOAS.
D’arcy, P. 2006. The people of the sea: Environment, identity, and history in Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
De Blij, H. 2005. Why geography matters? Three challenges facing America: Climate change, the rise of China, and global terrorism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dening, G. 2006. Deep times, deep spaces: Civilizing the sea. In Sea changes: Historicizing the ocean, eds. B. Klein and G. Mackenthun, 13–35. New York and London: Routledge.
Duewel, J. 2014. Changing agricultural technologies and socio-cultural ecologies: Lowland and upland irrigation management along a watershed in Central Java, Indonesia. Paper presented at Conference on Water, Sogang University, Seoul, 26–27 June.
Emerson, N.B. 1909. Unwritten literature of Hawaii: Sacred songs of the hula. Bulletin 38 of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington: Government Printing Press.
Geertz, H. 1963. Indonesian cultures and communities. In Indonesia, ed. R. McVey, 24– 96. New Haven: HRAF Press.
Hägerdal, H. 2012. Lords of the land, lords of the sea: Conflict and adaptation in early colonial Timor, 1600–1800. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004253506
Hau’ofa, E. 1994. Our sea of islands. The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs 6(1): 148–161.
Hereniko, V. 2000. Indigenous knowledge and academic imperialism. In Remembrance of Pacific pasts, ed. R. Borofsky, 78–91. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Higham, C. 1996. The bronze age of Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Horden, P. and Purcell, N. 2009. The corrupting sea: A study of Mediterranean history. London: Blackwell.
Hviding, E. 1996. Guardians of Marovo lagoon: Practice, place, and politics in maritime Melanesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Joshi, D. and Fawcett, B. 2006. Water, Hindu mythology and an unequal social order in India. In A history of water, vol. 3: The world of water, eds. T. Tvedt and T. Oestigaard, 119–136. London: I.B.
Tauris. Kathirithamby-Wells, J. 1993. Hulu-hilir unity and conflict: Malay statecraft in east Sumatra before the mid-nineteenth century. Archipel 45: 77–96. https://doi.org/10.3406/arch.1993.2894
Lansing, J.S. 1974. Evil in the morning of the world: Phenomenological approaches to a Balinese community. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies.
. 1991. Priests and programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lewis, M.W. 1999. Dividing the ocean sea. The Geographical Review 89(2): 188–214. https://doi.org/10.2307/216086
Li, T. 1998. Nguyen Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program.
. 2006a. The rise and fall of the Jiaozhi ocean region. In The perception of maritime space in traditional Chinese sources, eds. A. Schottenhammer and R. Ptak, 125–139. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
. 2006b. The eighteenth-century Mekong delta and its world of water frontier. In Viet Nam borderless histories, eds. Nhung Tuyet Tran and A. Reid, 147–162. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
. 2016. A historical sketch of the landscape of the Red River delta. TRaNS (Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia) 4(2): 351–363. https://doi.org/10.1017/trn.2016.8
Lowe, C. 2003. The magic of space: Sama at sea and on land in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 159(1): 109–133. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134379-90003753
Malo, D. 1971 (1951). Hawaiian antiquities (2nd ed.) (Trans. by N. B. Emerson). Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press.
Mayoury and Nagaosrivathana, P. 2007. The enduring sacred landscape of the Naga. Chiengmai: Mekong Press.
Mosse, D. 2011. The rule of water: Uncertainty and the cultural ecology of water in South India. In A history of water, series II, vol. 1: Idea of water from ancient societies to the modern world, eds. T. Tvedt and T. Oestigaard, 218–230. London: I.B. Tauris.
Oestigaard, T. 2005. Death and life-giving waters: Cremation, caste, and cosmogony in karmic traditions. British Archaeological Reports (BAR) International Series 1353. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Paredes, O. 2016. Rivers of memory and oceans of difference in the Lumad world of Mindanao. TRaNS (Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia) 4(2): 329–349. https://doi.org/10.1017/trn.2015.28
Pearson, M.N. 1985. Littoral society: The case for the coast. The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History 7(1): 1–8.
. 2003. The Indian Ocean. London and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203414132
. 2006. Littoral society: The concept and the problems. Journal of World History 17(4): 353–373. https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2006.0059
Penny, D. 2010. The Mekong River system and the end of the Angkor civilization: A water historical perspective. In A history of water, series II, vol. 2; Rivers and society: From early civilizations to modern times, eds. T. Tvedt and R. Coopey, 129–143. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.
Pham, D. 2015. Power, ecstasy, and enlightenment: The role of the Bale Kambang in 17th century Balinese kingship. MA dissertation, University of Hawai‘i.
Pringle, R. 1970. Rajahs and rebels: The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke rule, 1841–1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Sbeghen, J.A.M. 2004. An analysis of the sculpture of Candi Sukuh in Central Java: Its meanings and religious functions 1437–1443 C.E. PhD dissertation, University of Queensland.
Stark, M. and Acabado, S. 2014. Sacred and social water management in pre-modern Southeast Asia: Lowland Khmers and upland Cordillerans. Paper presented at Conference on Water, Sogang University, Seoul, 26–27 June.
Steinberg, P.E. 2003. The social construction of the ocean. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, P. 2014. Water in the shaping and unmaking of Khmer identity on the VietnamCambodia frontier. TRaNS (Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia) 2(1): 103–130. https://doi.org/10.1017/trn.2013.18
Tvedt, T. 2010a. Water systems, environmental history and the deconstruction of nature. Environment and History 16(2): 143–166. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734010X12699419057179
. 2010b. Why England and not China and India? Water systems and the history of the Industrial Revolution. Journal of Global History 5(1): 29–50. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022809990325
Vannote R.L., Minshall, G.W., Cummins, K.W., Sedell, J.R. and Cushing, C.E. 1980. The river continuum concept. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 37(1): 130–137. https://doi.org/10.1139/f80-017
Water Resource Research Center. 2006. Looking to Hawaii’s past to insure a sustainable future: Significance of water in Hawaiian culture. Power Point presentation. http://www.wrrc.hawaii.edu/seminars/Wai-6perpage.pdf (accessed 3 October 2018).
Wheeler, C. 2006. Re-thinking the sea in Vietnamese history: Littoral society in the integration of Thuan-Quang, seventeenth–eighteenth centuries. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37(1): 123–153. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022463405000445