The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXXI, Part 1-2, 1983 - Khamkoo

REV.IEWS 213
Sulak Siv.ar.aksa seems to have be~n given the responsibility of deli'Vering the
key-note address of the conference in. the allocation of topics. His paper "Southeast
Asia and the Environment" comes closest in scope to the purported theme of the conference.
Apart fro1n the radicai· tone, the· paper has a tendency to· present a simpiistic
perspective, idealize and romanticize the past as well· as make careless assertions eg,
the suggestion that there is a build-lip of foreign military bases in Southeast Asia.
One would think that there has been a scaling down after 1975.- However,.in spite of
the above reservations, my sympathies lie ·with· Sulak. ·Fot as G.K. Chesterton once
remarked, "It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the Saints than to speak folly .
wisely like the Demons". Sulak's general point that the quality of the Southeast
Asian environment is deteriorating is well taken. Unless deterioration is arrested the
future of Southeast Asian societie.s may be calamitous.
After ADgel's paper, De Konick's in-Chapter II on "Work, Space and Power in
the Rice Fields .of l{edah: Reflections on the :~ispossession of the. Territory" provides
much more satisfying·reading due to its more focussed approach .. The next paper by
Voss on "Market Penetration and Class Differentiation in Northern Luzon: the Implications
of a Development Project Which Failed" is also interesting and falls within the
tradition which tends to identify the knave in rural society as the capitalist-landlordmerchant-cum-middleman
class. This perspective may be more true of the Philippines
than of other countries in the region. In Thailand, official oppression is resented more
keenly by the rural population than capitalist middleman exploitation.
Donald Crone's paper on "Mobilization and Transnational Associations in
ASEAN" is dry, boring, unanalytical and reads like an organizational directory. One
suspects that it is not so much the author's fault as the fact that there are not many
significant things to say about the topic. ASEAN as an economic network "exists"
largely because there· has been so many ASEAN meetings; beyond that ASEAN does
not quite "exist".
Ozay Mehmet examines Malaysia's employment re-structuring policies in the
Fourth Malaysia Plan (1980-1985). One may add that this preoccupation with employment
restructuring is unique to the development of Malaysia. One does not run across
this component in the Development plans of Thailand,' Indonesia, Philippines and
Singapore. However, the author notes that the objectives and targets of the plan are
based on projections from the high growth period of the seventies. As such the author
suggests that these targets are unrealistic in view of the current world recession and, if
pushed, may lead to communal violence.