Abstract
This book offers a view from Southeast Asia, where oral history is embryonic and state led but is also being socially contested and redefined. The book began as a conference in Singapore in 2010, organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and the Singapore Heritage Society. ISEAS had hosted a similar event 20 years ago, which resulted in the publication Oral History in Southeast Asia: Theory and Method (1998).1 The interim years have witnessed significant changes in Southeast Asia that are transforming the practice of oral history.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
P. Lim Pui Huen, James H. Morrison, and Kwa Chong Guan (eds.), Oral History in Southeast Asia: Theory and Method (Singapore: National Archives of Singapore & Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1998).
Chua Beng Huat, Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in Singapore (New York: Routledge, 1997).
Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
Alistair Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” Oral History Review 34.1 (2007): 49–70.
Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Oral History Reader, 2nd edition, ed. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 37–38.
Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes (eds.), Oral History and Public Memories (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), p. vii.
Roxana Waterson (ed.), Southeast Asian Lives: Personal Narratives and Historical Experience (Singapore: NUS Press, 2006), p 14.
Paula Hamilton, “The Proust Effect: Oral History and the Senses,” in The Oxford Handbook to Oral History, ed. Donald A. Ritchie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Gyanendra Pandey, “Voices from the Edge: The Struggle to Write Subaltern Histories,” in Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, ed. Vinayak Chaturvedi (London: Verso, 2000), pp. 281–99.
Gayatri C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313.
Shail Mayaram, “Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence in Mewat,” in Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 126–63.
Donald K. Emmerson, “‘Southeast Asia’: What’s in a Name?,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 15 (1984): 1–21.
Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, 2 volumes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, 1993).
James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
O. W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982).
Benedict Anderson, The Specter of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (New York: Verso, 1998).
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
Anthony Reid, Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Hans-Dieter Evers and Rüdiger Korff, Southeast Asian Urbanism: The Meaning and Power of Social Space (Münster: Lit Verlage; New York: St. Martin’s Press; Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000).
R. E. Elson, The End of the Peasantry in Southeast Asia: A Social and Economic History of Peasant Livelihood, 1800–1990s (New York and Basingstoke: St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan, 1997).
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. xii.
Cited in Loh Kah Seng, “Encounters at the Gates,” in The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History, ed. Loh Kah Seng and Liew Kai Khiun (Singapore: Ethos Books & Singapore Heritage Society, 2010), pp. 21–22.
Kwa Chong Guan, “Oral Histories in the Making of Our Memories and Heritage,” Asian Journal of Social Science 36 (2008): 612–28; Loh Kah Seng, “Seeking the Bukit Ho Swee Fire,” in The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History, pp. 79–91.
Lysa Hong and Huang Jianli, The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), chapter 4.
Former leftists and social activists detained without trial in the 1960s and in 1987 have recalled their experiences in interviews, books, and private discussions. See the work of Function 8, http://fn8org.wordpress.com/, last accessed Aug 17, 2012, and Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, interview with Lim Hock Siew, Aug 5, 1982; Tan Jing Quee, Teo Soh Lung and Koh Kay Yew (eds.), Our Thoughts Are Free: Poems and Prose on Imprisonment and Exile (Singapore: Ethos Book, 2009).
For “particular publics” see Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 9.
Sharon R. Roseman, “‘How We Built the Road’: The Politics of Memory in Rural Galicia,” American Ethnologist 23.4 (1996): 836–60.
Greg Poulgrain, The Genesis of Konfrontasi: Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia 1945–65 (Bathhurst, NSW: Crawford House Publishing, 1998).
Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain’s Asian Empire (London: Penguin Books, 2008).
Lim Joo Jock and S. Vani (eds.), Armed Separatism in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1984).
Norman G. Owen et. al (eds.), The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press; Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2005).
Thongchai Winichakul, “Remembering/Silencing the Traumatic Past,” in Cultural Crisis and Social Memory: Modernity and Identity in Thailand and Laos, ed. Shigeharu Tanabe and Charles F. Keyes (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), pp. 243–83.
Another group is the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, established in 1974 during the martial law period, http://www.tfdp.net/, last accessed Aug 17, 2012. For a recent work based on the accounts of activists, see Ferdinand C. Llanes (ed.), Tibak Rising: Activism in the Days of Martial Law (Manila: Anvil Publishing, 2012).
National Historical Institute and Philippine National Historical Society, History from the People: Kasaysayan mula sa Bayan, Vol. 1 (Manila: National Historical Institute and Philippine National Historical Society, 1998). 46. Thongchai, “Remembering/Silencing the Traumatic Past.”
Fadjar I. Thufail, “Ninjas in Narratives of Local and National Violence in Post-Suharto Indonesia,” in Beginning to Remember: The Past in the Indonesian Present, ed. Mary S. Zurbuchen (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), pp. 150–67.
Michael Leach, “Difficult Memories: The Independence Struggle as Cultural Heritage in East Timor,” in Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with “Difficult Heritage,” ed. William Logan and Keir Reeves (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 144–61).
Barbara Allen, “Oral History: The Folk Connection,” in The Past Meets The Present: Essays on Oral History, ed. David Stricklin and Rebecca Sharpless (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988), pp. 15–26.
Laurajane Smith and Emma Waterton, Heritage, Communities and Archaeology (London: Duckworth, 2009), p. 29.
Tim Winter, Post-Conflict Heritage, Postcolonial Tourism: Culture, Politics and Development at Angkor (Abingdon, Oxon; NY: Routledge, 2007).
Karen Fog Olwig, “The Burden of Heritage: Claiming a Place for a West Indian Culture,” American Ethnologist 26.2 (May 1999): 370–88.
Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (eds.), Intangible Heritage (London: Routledge, 2009).
See also Loh Kah Seng, “‘No More Road to Walk’: Cultures of Heritage and Leprosariums in Singapore and Malaysia,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 17.3 (2011): 230–44.
Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment, 2nd edition (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003).
Thongchai Winichakul, “Writing at the Interstices: Southeast Asian Historians and Post-National Histories in Southeast Asia,” in New Terrains in Southeast Asian History, ed. Abu Talib Ahmad and Tan Liok Ee (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002), p. 11.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2013 Kah Seng Loh, Stephen Dobbs, and Ernest Koh
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Loh, K.S., Koh, E., Thomson, A. (2013). Oral History and Fragments in Southeast Asia. In: Loh, K.S., Dobbs, S., Koh, E. (eds) Oral History in Southeast Asia. PALGRAVE Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311672_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311672_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45703-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-31167-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)