Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

3T
Rethinking “traditional” culture (Chair, TBA)
Zarina Muhammad Dancing Horses, Possessing Spirits and Invisible Histories: Re-Imagining the Borders of Magic
and Modernity in Contemporary Southeast Asia
The realm of the magical and mystical have always been contained within its own world: sustained through
its practitioners and believers, and explored by those who attempt to document it through academia and
ethnographic research. Within this region of Southeast Asia, esoteric beliefs continue to contribute to the
vastly heterogeneous forms of religious practices. My paper aims to examine the “invisible histories” of
these magico-religious traditions, the issue of cultural translation and the intersections between artistic
practice, ethnographic research, oral histories, intangible heritage and questions of cultural difference,
identity and transformation. How can artists, curators and researchers engage with these ideas in relevant
and coherent ways? In what ways are these issues pertaining to tradition, history, heritage, environment,
culture and identity playing an increasingly significant role in social and public debates, and artistic practice
in Southeast Asia? I will address the questions of relevance and the appropriateness of appropriation of
these belief systems in the context of visual representations within contemporary Southeast Asian cultural
landscapes. By examining the shifting borders underpinning and surrounding the ecosystems of visual arts
practice, how can we consider the ways the cultural worker/producer comes into a convergence with certain
concerns pertaining to the social, material, political, sacred, spiritual and transcendental realities of this
region? How do artists then negotiate and create work through the lenses of these cultural revisions,
reinstatements, rejection and anxieties? In doing so, how do these individuals reflect on how these forms,
beliefs, practices are reconciled in a world of multiple and contending modernities? What are the residual
colonial legacies and cultural tensions that still play a part in shaping and moving through the communities
of present-day Southeast Asia?
Vasudha Dhingra Bahl The Future is Traditional: Breaking the Myth of a Homogenised “Global Culture”
The processes of globalisation have impacted our cultures in ways more than one. Trends from the last
couple of decades suggest the emergence of a homogenised “global” culture, which is influenced, and
dominated by the Western culture, more specifically the American type. The latter is characterised by what
George Ritzer calls “McDonaldization”. This paper will argue that the development of an American-style
monoculture in the world is a myth. Even though some cultures are more dynamic than others, yet cultures
cannot be homogenised, conceptually and empirically. Undoubtedly, multnational corporations and the
global media have played an instrumental role in the spread of this particular type of consumerist culture in
most parts of the world. But the McDonalds, the Starbucks, the Gaps, the Calvin Kleins, or the Coca-Colas
have been facing serious opposition from antglobalizers, particularly in the Southern countries, for not just
the challenge they pose to the local economies but also because of the imminent threat they present to the
local cultures. It needs to be noted that although some specific attributes of some local and national cultures
may have been reconstituted due to globalisation but they have not been completely replaced by the socalled
uniform “global” culture. On the other hand, contemporary trends, at best, represent what Roland
Robertson calls “hybrid cultures”, or “cultural confusion” or “syncretism” as in the words of Eric Hobsbawm.
The fusion of the local and global cultures as reflected in the process of “glocalisation” should not be
mistaken to mean that a “global culture” has been established. Rather, as this paper will highlight, the
imposition of what I term as a “macro-culture” on the “micro-cultures”, and their intermixing is not
necessarily seen as a positive development, by sceptics and purists alike. The local and national cultures will
continue to protect and preserve their cultural spaces which are increasingly being wiped out by a powerful
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