ASEAN's ‘people-oriented’ aspirations: civil society influences on non-traditional security governance

Since the Asian financial crisis, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sought to reorient itself towards becoming a ‘people-oriented’ association. Democratic transitions in the region and increased demands from civil society to be actively involved in regional governance have prompted ASEAN to develop forms of participatory regionalism. In practice, however, the rhetorical aspirations of ASEAN have not often matched the level of participation or support expected by civil society organisations. It has often been the case that ASEAN's decisions, especially those related to sensitive issues, have been influenced by external pressure as opposed to participatory mechanisms. The aim of this article is to determine to what extent participatory mechanisms impact ASEAN's approach to non-traditional security. By doing so, the authors combine two key elements central to a ‘people-oriented’ approach to regionalism: the incorporation of deliberative and participatory processes and the acknowledgement of transboundary security issues which require cooperation to move beyond state-centric approaches. This article explains that despite the rhetorical emphasis on participatory regionalism, it continues to be the case that regional civil society organisations and non-state actors have limited capacity to influence ASEAN. By providing a critical analysis of influences on ASEAN's non-traditional security policies, the authors offer a modest yet valuable contribution to the emerging literature on ASEAN's ‘people-oriented’ regionalism and advance a nuanced understanding of ASEAN's participatory mechanisms.     

Comparative Analysis of Civil Society and State Discourse on Disabled People’s Rights and Welfare in Southeast Asia 2010–16

Over the next quarter century it is likely that Southeast Asian countries will experience high levels of growth in the number of disabled people. It is therefore significant that, over the past decade, the region’s governments have at last ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). At this critical juncture, and in the face of ongoing human rights issues in several territories, this study presents comparative analysis of state and civil society organisations’ (CSOs’) discourse on CRPD implementation. The findings show that while governments have espoused a participatory approach to fulfilling their CRPD obligations, contemporary practice falls short. Disabled people currently experience barriers to shaping policy and accessing social welfare. There is a “disconnect” between state and civil spheres that hampers effective implementation based on partnership working and knowledge exchange. In turn, this raises issues of legitimation, performativity and the endurance of the Medical Model of Disability across the region.     

To Make Live or Let Die? Rural Dispossession and the Protection of Surplus Populations

Abstract: A biopolitics of the population, when it succeeds in securing life and wellbeing, is surely worth having. It has become urgent in rural Asia, where a new round of enclosures has dispossessed large numbers of people from access to land as a way to sustain their own lives, and neoliberal policies have curtailed programs that once helped to sustain rural populations. At the same time, new jobs in manufacturing have not emerged to absorb this population. They are thus “surplus” to the needs of capital, and not plausibly described as a labour reserve. Who, then, would act to keep these people alive, and why would they act? I examine this question by contrasting a conjuncture in India, where a make live program has been assembled under the rubric of the “right to food”, and Indonesia, where the massacre of the organized left in 1965 has left dispossessed populations radically exposed.     

Governing Civil Society in Cambodia: Implications of the NGO Law for the “Rule of Law”

Abstract

This article reviews the introduction of the 2015 Law on Associations and Non-governmental Organisations in Cambodia (“NGO Law”) from 2011–17 and explores its connection to the rule of law. After outlining the content, definitions and regulatory environment related to the NGO Law, it provides a commentary on its initial application, and examines its potential articulation with other legislation (such as defamation and libel, telecommunications law and land law). I argue that the NGO Law should be characterised as a carefully crafted piece of legislation, developed and defended over time by the ruling political party to increase control and intimidation by invoking adherence to the “rule of law”. Narratives of national security, terrorism, neutrality and cultural cohesion have been interwoven with new regulatory requirements to obfuscate overt political interference. The article argues that the NGO Law intersects with, and consolidates, the recent trend of the government’s use of legislation as a political tool to control and manipulate political opponents and government critics. This is not to deny that there are areas of civil society action and service provision that require greater government control via regulatory compliance. Nevertheless, the state’s attempts to tighten civil space are being met with resistance and “work around” strategies from the plethora of diverse organisations functioning in Cambodia.     

Civil society and public–private partnerships: case study of the Agri-FoodBank in South Africa

In recent decades, civil society organizations (CSOs) have joined public–private partnerships (PPPs) to reduce poverty and promote local development. In what follows, I analyze the development of the Agri-FoodBank (AFB) CSO in South Africa in order to critically examine PPPs. As part of the FoodBank South Africa (FBSA) network of food banks, the AFB has emerged to reduce rural and urban food insecurities. Building on the national system of food banks, the AFB aims to train small-scale rural farmers to sell their crops to the food bank’s network of local food organizations which then feed the urban poor. In the case of the AFB, findings suggest that the PPP emerged as a mutually beneficial collaboration between the state and FBSA, as the state needed political power and FBSA needed money. However, for this PPP to form, FBSA completely transformed its mission and structure to fit the state’s preference for rural development projects. Thus, although the AFB formed to empower FBSA, data findings indicate that the AFB has increased state control over FBSA. In this way, PPPs need to be understood within the context of local state-civil society relations, as methods of state control reflect South Africa’s unique version of neoliberalism.     

Replacing a Father: civilian aspects of the Swedish military, 1600–1800

Early modern society was characterized by severe conflicts, but not all were caused by antagonistic relations between military (combatants) and civilian (noncombatants) persons. The civil–military relations were blurred. The separation and differentiation of civil and military functions in society was a process that occurred mainly in the 19th century. This process coincided with a conceptual change of the nature of gender: ‘civil’ became feminine and ‘military’ became masculine. Civil–military relations in early modern societies have recently been the focus of novel and productive research, and this article falls into that category. How civilian aspects of society were subordinated to military demands while still being a part of the military is examined in this article from a different angle; namely, to what extent the military was in charge of civilian aspects within its own organization. This is discussed from a gender perspective and scrutinized through the role of children in a series of issues connected with the creation of boundaries between civilian and military spheres in society. To put it simply, what did children do within the Swedish military in the 17th and 18th centuries? And who were the children? The answers are based on data from garrisons and the Swedish Ship’s Boys’ Corps, together with data from previous research on military history in Scandinavia. The article is part of a project that aims to make visible the role of children in the military prior to the era of child soldiers.     

Geographies at the margins: borders in South Asia–an introduction

This introduction to a special section exploring \"Geographies at the Margins\" of South Asia offers a discussion that links the literature on borders and margins to the regional complexities and geographies of South Asia. Specifically, we argue for linking of these literatures to develop an optic for thinking about external and internal borders that is at once relational and comparative. South Asia, as has often been observed, is a region marked with multiple borders and margins. It is also a space where the articulation between such spaces is at once suggestive and crucial for understanding the political geography of South Asia and the ways that borders and margins are similarly implicated in working out the postcolonial politics of nation, state, and space.     

Appeasing the Spirits Along the ‘Highway of Horror’: Civic Life in Wartime Republic of Vietnam

During the Easter Offensive hundreds of Republic of Vietnam soldiers and civilians were killed while fleeing Qu?ng Tr? city along Highway One, earning this stretch of the road the name ‘the Highway of Horrors’ [??i L? Kinh Hoàng]. This article examines this understudied event and the efforts of ordinary people, particularly the staff of the daily newspaper Sóng Th?n, to collect and bury the corpses left on the highway. In focusing on this humanitarian endeavour, it highlights the spiritual consequences of mass death, people’s agency in countering the violence of the Vietnam War, and the dynamism of South Vietnam’s civil society.     

Goats Mingling With Sheep? Professionalisation,Personalities, and Partnerships Between British Civil and Military Engineers,c.1837–1939

This article explores the entangled history of civil and military engineering from 1837 to 1939. Typically characterised in the historiography as a relationship marked by neglect and intransigence, it reveals a longstanding kinship between the two professions, built on the firm foundations of mutual interest and respect. Charting the formal and informal links between civil and military engineering in terms of knowledge, recruitment, and education, this article argues that the relationship, while often characterised by tensions and disagreements, represented a process of re-negotiation and renewal to meet new challenges and altered contexts.     

The politics of education for globalisation: managed activism in a time of crisis

Since the 1990s, governments of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have begun to promote their foreign aid politics domestically via global education. This policy remit has its origins in civil society and has been combined with a stated aim on the part of governments to prepare populations for globalisation, but also to convince populations of the need for increased aid spending in the context of various challenges, including calls for aid effectiveness, large-scale protest by the metropolitan left and rising parochialisms that diminish cosmopolitan world views. In the context of the apparent spontaneity of political mobilisation globally, this article seeks to qualify the optimism of the political sociology and social movements literature on the network society by comparing two OECD government remits for global/development education in the UK and Australia, which are attempts to manage or socially engineer civic activism and engagement. The problem which this article addresses is that, on the face of it, state funding of ‘global education’ appears to be a success of the activism of educators combined with the networked advocacy efforts of development non-governmental organisations, except that it has occurred in tension with international drivers to use education to further global economic competitiveness and governments' desire to promote their own foreign aid spending in a climate of falling legitimacy. This phenomenon of state funding for global education might be considered an elaboration of network politics, but this article argues that it must equally be read, via Gramsci, as a hegemonic contest in the struggle for subject production appropriate to the global knowledge economy.     

A summary of the past two decades' research on non-governmental forces in modern China

Recent research on non-governmental forces in modern China, during its inception in the early 1990s, bore obvious influences from Western theories of civil society and the public sphere. By the late 1990s, this research began to pick up new momentum: the scope was expanded, findings were increased, essays and empirical studies came forth incessantly. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, research by Chinese scholars on the topic grew at an even greater rate. Aside from those academics who continued to borrow theories of civil society and public sphere, more scholars began employing the analytical framework of “society and state” to tackle the many issues within the non-governmental sectors of modern China.     

新历史观基础上的市民社会批判——重读《德意志意识形态》

马克思恩格斯对市民社会本质的理解和认识经历了一个复杂的发展过程。在《德意志意识形态》著作中,马克思恩格斯已经站在广义的历史唯物主义基础之上对市民社会本质进行了全面的分析,具体内容包括：市民社会的历史本质在于分工基础之上的工业和竞争造成的个人利益与社会利益的分离以及积累劳动与现实劳动的对立;由于货币和分工造成的市民社会的物役性和个人生活的偶然性,市民社会工业的发展必然导致奴役性分工的消灭以及生产力的全面占有,即实现共产主义。     

Review Article: Technology and Culture during the First Climacteric

In 1953 Israel abandoned the ‘defensive–offensive’ military strategy that it had adopted four years earlier, in the wake of the First Arab–Israeli War, in favor of an ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy that, to a large extent, persists until this day. This paper, which employs previously untapped Israeli official documents, personal interviews, memoirs, biographies, and secondary sources, casts new light on this critical juncture in the history of Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict. The paper challenges existing works by showing when and how Israel's ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy was adopted. More specifically, the authors argue that it was the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), especially its planning bodies - and not the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, David Ben Gurion, or the IDF's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Dayan - that initiated this change, and that the new strategy met no objection when it was discussed and approved by the Israeli government. The authors also inquire about the possible implications of this change for Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict, and ask how this case informs general debates regarding the origins of military strategies.     

谈宋初之"欲武臣读书"与"用读书人"

有关宋太祖欲“武臣尽读书以通治道”以及“宰相须用读书人”的说法,于宋初国家走向文治的导向意义,为历来的治史者和读史者着意阐发。对于与此导向相关的一些说法,我们既要注意其话语,又须把握其寓意;既要注意其说法,又须观察其做法,方能将层层包裹的解释与史实本身剥离开来。事实上,宋初国家政治秩序建设中“文治”导向的确立经历了曲折反复的渐变过程。