Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

API Fellowships Program that the 4 th Workshop of the
Asian Public Intellectuals was held from 29 November
to 3 December, 2005 in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia on
the broad theme, “<strong>Reflections</strong> on the Human Condition:
Change, Conflict and Modernity”. The Workshop was
a major highlight of the API Fellowships Program as
it came towards the end of the fellowships after all the
individual Fellows have conducted their projects in
the countries of their choice. It was at this Workshop
that they shared their findings and ideas based on their
respective projects and received useful comments and
feedback from the Workshop discussants and other
participants. At the same time, the 4 th API International
Workshop has the added significance in that the API
Fellowships Program had already a five-year history
since its launching in Kuala Lumpur in July 2000.
Whatever the projects the 2004/2005 batch of API
Fellows had undertaken, they were guided by several
important and critical questions when they undertook
to prepare their Workshop papers. These questions were:
• First, can there be alternatives for change to the
current human condition under the onslaught of
the on-going processes of neoliberal globalization?
If so, what are their outlines, mechanisms, and
substance?
• Second, will the new and changing identities
emerging in our region reflect our own
distinctiveness based on our rich history and
culture, thus enriching and advancing our culture
and civilisation with our distinctive and original
contribution? Or will we succumb to cultural
homogenization and imitation?
• Third, will the moral authority underlining the
voices of the API Fellows and other public
intellectuals inspire further concientisation for
improvement of human lives in the search for
social justice, and generate closer cooperation
between peoples and countries in the region to
seek acceptable and workable alternatives?
• Fourth, will the community of concerned public
intellectuals who participate in the API Fellowships
Program emerge and consolidate itself and become
a sustainable entity and a moral force for change?
How can it link with other groups to work together
for that purpose? What are the ways and possible
mechanisms to be instituted to achieve this worthy
endeavor?
By having these questions as the Fellows’ guide, the
Workshop was able to provide a connecting thread
and coherence for the rich but otherwise diverse
projects they undertook during their Fellowship. The
thinking, theorization and programmatic action the
Fellows proposed and discussed at the Workshop were
interesting and important for the public to know and
digest. Hopefully all these will make the necessary impact
upon civil society, upon the thinking of the public,
and very importantly, upon the thinking, envisioning
and direction of policy-making. The new ideas
the Fellows have come forward with will hopefully
stimulate further thinking on how to understand the
problems, as well as on how to formulate and implement
alternatives to what is currently experienced by the
people so that humanity and civilization can be
transformed for the better.
This book consists of the revised papers presented by
the Fellows based on the comments given at the
Workshop and also by the Workshop Director. To
facilitate a systematic presentation of the ideas and
findings in the papers, this book is divided into six
different but inter-related parts, each with a sub-theme,
all of which directly or indirectly address the broad
questions outlined above. The six sub-themes are:
Heritage, identity, change and conflict; Engaging
modernity: religion, culture and art; Changing
lifestyles and health; Social justice, human rights and
civil society; Empowering the poor and the vulnerable;
and State, development and globalization.
Heritage, identity, change and conflict
The struggle over heritage is the struggle over history,
over identity, over indigeniety, and over claims of rightful
ownership of resources. During the colonial period,
colonized societies and peoples were disempowered
and lost their claims over some of their invaluable
heritage which was expropriated by the colonial
powers. In today’s post-colonial era, there is increased
conscientization and awareness about heritage, namely
its importance as a definer of identity. Nevertheless,
conflicts—sometimes protracted, sometimes mediated
over shorter periods—occur as forces of change namely
market forces make further inroads that impinge upon
heritage.
The papers in Session I examine in their own way
important issues involving both cultural artifacts as well
as natural heritage, ranging from artifacts originating
during prehistory like those in the Gua Sirih in Sarawak,
to those of the present period, and how discourses on
heritage become means of contemporary mobilization
and conscientization about identity and claims of rights
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
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