Asia Institute - Theses
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ItemAbū Ḥayyān al-Ġarnāṭī: Andalusian Philological Learning in the Islamic East( 2022-06)Over the seventh/thirteenth century, Andalusian philological learning went from being virtually unknown in the mashriq to becoming the backbone of its pedagogical tradition. A generation of emigre Andalusian scholars in the mashriq slowly established the groundwork for Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati, the scholar who had the most substantial influence and was the capstone of this project. Abu Hayyan was born in Nasrid Granada in 654/1256 and passed away in Mamluk Cairo in 745/1344. The central question of this thesis is: How did philological knowledge flow through Abu Hayyan? Before answering this question, I argue that “philological discourses” is a more complete way of analysing the Arabic grammatical tradition than the prevailing “grammatical schools” category. Abu Hayyan's biography and intellectual lineage are examined to show that he was thoroughly Andalusian in his philological training. Abu Hayyan championed Andalusian philological learning by forming Andalusian scholarly communities in the mashriq, by forming Andalusian textual communities, and by adopting specifically Andalusian modes of philological thinking influenced primarily by Zahirism. Abu Hayyan formed Andalusian scholarly communities by preferring Andalusians or mashriqi students of Andalusians. Abu Hayyan formed Andalusian textual communities by choosing Andalusians as his main interlocutors, commenting on Andalusian books, and quoting Andalusians more copiously than their Mashriqi counterparts. Scholarly and textual communities amplified the presence and prestige of Andalusians in the mashriq. The thesis then moves on to look at issues of philological methodology. In the seventh/thirteenth century, Arabic philology in the mashriq leaned toward a science servicing theology and jurisprudence. Given the nature of these disciplines, mashriqi grammarians used a more theory-oriented approach. Because of local influences, Arabic philology in al-Andalus had veered towards a data-oriented approach. Andalusian philology retained its bias towards the literary sources of Arabic: the Qur'anic readings, Qur'anic exegesis, poetry, and literature. I analyse the influence of Zahirism on grammar by analysing Ibn Mada'’s Zahiri-inspired epistemological critique of grammarians in some depth. After comparing and contrasting Ibn Mada' and Abu Hayyan's Zahiri identities and methods, I discuss how Abu Hayyan implemented Zahirism in his work. Abu Hayyan's Zahirism can be seen through his positions on grammatical data, especially hadith and his use of non-Arabic languages. The thesis ends with Abu Hayyan's influence on the generation after him, showing how Andalusian philological learning became cemented in the near mashriq. At this point, the Arabic philological tradition bifurcates into an Andalusian data-oriented one, dominant in the Arab world and Africa, and a theory-oriented one, dominant in the Persianate world. Please note: The transliteration system has been modified here as the Thesis deposit system does not support characters with diacritics.
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ItemSmaller Players’ Strategic Choices: the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s Responses to a Rising China on the South China Sea Issue( 2022-11)This thesis aims to explain the divergent strategies of the Philippines and Vietnam vis-a-vis China on the South China Sea from 1991 to 2016. Although each state shares a common geo-strategic environment and an enormous power imbalance compared to China, the Philippines oscillated between accommodation and confrontation, whereas Vietnam adopted a moderate position throughout. Employing neoclassical realism, this thesis attributes this contrast to unit-level factors, namely the two states’ distinct views of China and the United States, and their contrasting domestic political dynamics. Specifically, the Philippines held a neutral view of China in the sense of lacking a longstanding distrust of China as a threat to its national security, whereas Vietnam was preoccupied with deep-rooted suspicion of China’s territorial ambitions and fear of China’s possible punishment for acting against its interest. The two countries’ views of China evolved out of their accumulated experience of interaction with the northern neighbour from pre-colonial times to the late Cold War years, in the maritime domain, and in economic arena. Such ideational differences defined the varying degree to which each country accommodated to or balanced against China, even though they both faced a similar geo-strategic landscape in the Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, the Philippines had positive expectations of its alliance with the United States while Vietnam felt mistrust of power politics and the United States, again based in distinct historical experiences. The Philippines’ and Vietnam’s respective views, in turn, led to the former’s policy of balancing with the United States against China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea and the latter’s cautious stance on Vietnam-U.S. political and defence engagement. The Philippines’ personality-driven foreign policymaking was also more conducive to dramatic shifts in position on the South China Sea issue vis-a-vis Beijing, compared to Vietnam’s collective decision-making process, which promoted relative consistency. Together, all three of these dynamics have remained pivotal in shaping the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s South China Sea policies from 2016 to mid-2022. The findings of this comparative study underline the explanatory power of neoclassical realism to account for variations in state foreign policies under similar structural constraints and incentives. This contribution is amplified because this thesis applies the same analytical mechanism to understand shifting foreign policy dynamics over an unusually long timeframe of 25 years. Its approach can guide analysis of the specific policy paths that other smaller states such as Malaysia have followed. In the policy realm, by revealing the influence of the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s divergent images of China and distinct characteristics of their political-institutional structures on the two countries’ South China Sea policies, this thesis could guide ASEAN countries to shape Code of Conduct negotiations. Its insights into the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s different expectations of alliance politics can also help major powers map out practical initiatives to enhance strategic cooperation with these two Southeast Asian nations, such as through various frameworks of the Quad, ASEAN Plus and ASEAN’s Dialogue Partnership.
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ItemA Historical Comparison of Maududi and Hallaq: Religion, State and Political Theology in Mughal India( 2022)This thesis examines and compares different approaches to moral coercion and social order in Muslim political ethics. I compare the claims of Maulana Maududi’s Islamism paradigm with what I call Wael Hallaq’s Islamic Governance paradigm, with reference to their analytical relevance in Mughal India. Utilising the expansive resources in recent revisionist scholarship, I analyse Mughal ideas about religion, state and political theology, considering the ways in which Maududi, or Hallaq, are able to capture or appreciate those ideas. I find that, after examining Mughal sources, Hallaq overall offers a more persuasive way of understanding Muslim practice. Instead of solely privileging, as Maududi does, formal state-based legalities and a punitive approach to securing moral compliance, Mughal political culture more closely reflects the model offered by Hallaq. It was a milieu wherein important voices elevated personal ethical cultivation and openness to matters of social order, in a context of social and religious plurality. Ultimately, I contend that the consideration of a wider range of premodern Muslim voices draws our attention towards Hallaq’s model, destabilises Maududi’s Islamist grip on interpretations of Muslim history, and allows for a more thoroughly non-statist understanding of political Islam.
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ItemInvestigating and Resolving the Structural and Lexical Ambiguity in Legal Translation from Arabic into English through the Lens of Domestication and Foreignisation Approaches( 2022)Although many studies have investigated the challenging issues found in translating legal texts, research into identifying the causes and resolution of ambiguities found in translations between Arabic and English legal texts has received insufficient attention. Therefore, this study investigates the structural and lexical ambiguities found in four selected legal documents translated from Arabic into English by re-translating them in accordance with Venuti's approach, which adopts both domestication and foreignisation strategies. The documents have been selected on the basis of being typical in their representation of the culturally different Islamic Sharia law combined with civil law, which is currently employed in the Arab-Islamic world. At the time of writing, these documents had not been analysed in any other legal translation studies. In addressing the cultural and linguistic differences occurring between Arabic and English legal languages, the domestication and foreignisation strategies recommended by Venuti have been used to guide the theoretical framework for analysis. The investigation firstly explores the structural and lexical ambiguities found in the English translations of the selected documents, using a contrastive linguistic analysis to determine how Venuti’s domestication and foreignisation strategies can be applied to resolve them. Then, a descriptive and inferential statistical analysis has been undertaken to identify which strategy can best resolve each type of ambiguity. Results indicate that ambiguities emerge whenever there is a misuse of lexical or structural features related to linguistic differences between Arabic and English, with lexical differences contributing significantly more to ambiguity than structural differences. Furthermore, the linguistic aspects of both languages need to be considered in parallel with their cultural differences, or the text will again become ambiguous. The analysis clearly demonstrates that Venuti's concepts are useful for determining the relationships between context, language, and culture, which require more frequent use of foreignisation than domestication in resolving lexical and structural ambiguities. In other words, this research has shown that although the foreignisation strategy can be used to resolve most ambiguities in Arabic legal documents, in certain contexts, domestication is also needed to assist in reproducing the intended meaning of the original text. In conclusion, the results of this research offer an appropriate framework for effectively translating Arabic legal documents that convey the intended meaning for English readers. In so doing, this study contributes to the enhancement of translation theory by providing an effective model for legal translation strategies that can effectively address and resolve ambiguities in translations of legal texts.
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ItemNegotiating Secularism, Religious Freedom and Politics of Orthodoxy: Liberal-Progressive Muslim Discourse in Post-New Order Indonesia (1998-2013)( 2022)This thesis seeks to examine how liberal-progressive Muslim intellectuals have contributed to renewed struggles over religion-state relations and religious freedom in contemporary Indonesia, especially within the context of the country’s transition to democracy and the changing landscape of Muslim politics in the post-New Order era. One of the most significant markers of this changing political and religious landscape has been the revival of conservative and fundamentalist Islamic discourses and movements. Largely suppressed under the New Order, they have now gained greater prominence and official endorsement, putting into question the institutional support and dominance that the liberal-progressive Muslim discourse enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s. Against this backdrop, the central question this thesis seeks to answer is how liberal-progressive Muslim intellectuals have contributed to the reconfiguration of religion-state relations and religious freedom in light of the competing trends of democratization and the conservative turn of Muslim politics. The thesis focuses on the views of liberal-progressive Muslim intellectuals in three distinct but interrelated debates in the early period of Indonesia’s democratization: (1) the debate on secularism; (2) the controversy over the Ahmadiyah question, and (3) the contest over the Blasphemy Law. The thesis begins with a critical review of the highly essentialist and strictly secular-liberal narratives on religion-state relations and religious freedom and discusses whether they offer a satisfactory analytical lens to adequately understand the discourse on religion-state relations and religious freedom in Muslim societies. This is followed by a historical investigation of the evolving discourse and configuration of religion-state relations and religious freedom in modern Indonesia. An examination of the views of liberal-progressive Muslim intellectuals in the three debates mentioned above are then presented in the following three chapters. The thesis is concluded with a summary of its main argument and a brief theoretical reflection. The thesis argues that the issue of religion-state relations and religious freedom continues to be one of the key areas of struggle between competing and polarized Muslim discourses in post-New Order Indonesia. It further argues that in these struggles, the voices of liberal-progressive Muslim intellectuals have not only competed with the voice of their traditional opponent, the conservative and fundamentalist groups, but also with the voice of mainstream moderate Muslim groups and official interpretation of the state’s ideological and constitutional discourse. Moreover, on the question of whether and to what extent the liberal vision of religion-state relations and religious freedom can be reconciled with Islamic theology and state ideology, it is evident there has been tension between liberal-progressive Muslims and some elements of mainstream moderate Muslim groups, as represented by the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Muhammadiyah and the increasingly assertive semi-government body Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI). The post-New Order struggles over religion, state and religious freedom are thus better portrayed as the contest between a civic-pluralist vision of state and religious freedom championed by liberal-progressive Muslims, and its integralistic-majoritarian rival, broadly shared by conservative-radical Islamic groups and some elements of mainstream moderate Islamic groups, and officially incorporated into the state’s ideological and constitutional discourse.
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ItemResilience in a different voice( 2022)What does it mean to stay resilient while also move forward resiliently in the “slow” nuclear disaster recovery? What happens if the means to remain resilient becomes undermined by the very ideas and practices done in the name of resilience? How can resilience be reimagined? In this thesis, I examine how the contested notion of resilience is shaped by civil society practice in disaster recovery context. Existing scholarship on the role of civil society in resilience-building tends to offer either instrumentalist evaluations assessing how civil society mobilizes resources to support the disaster-affected community or deconstructionist critiques uncovering how civil society facilitates resilience as a form of neoliberal governmentality. Offering a different voice to the debate, I demonstrate civil society practice as a site of contestation where the notion of resilience becomes critically reflected and creatively acted upon. From 2017 to 2021, I became a volunteer with SWK, a charity association based in Cairns, Australia, that acts alongside the children of Fukushima affected by “3.11” or the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and the subsequent nuclear accident in Fukushima on March 11, 2011. Adopting an Action Research approach, I engaged in a collaborative inquiry to explore the different meanings and possibilities for action to create a place where children can be free from unwanted disaster-induced radiation concerns. On the one hand, I illuminate a paradoxical process of resilience in which the need for a place where children can be free from radiation concerns is being sustained, not merely by the diffusion of radionuclides as a result of the nuclear accident, but also by the very interventions done in the name of “building back better.” On the other hand, I shed light onto the grassroots resilience that reimagines how resilience can be done differently. I highlight the continuous (re)making of translocal relations (tsunagari) that center the concerns and hopes voiced by the children of Fukushima to explore more liveable, different futures —including nuclear-free future. I argue that, despite appealing to more peaceful and sustainable future, resilience thinking rooted in neoliberal environmentalism that preserves the sociotechnical imaginary of nuclear power is unsustainable, alienating and forecloses the capacity to pursue “better” futures. I call for a rethinking of resilience notion through a care perspective that places the flourishing of children and the planetary wellbeing at the heart of disaster resilience research, policies and practice.
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ItemNatDem Fictions: Revolutionary Experiences in Contemporary Film and Literature in the Philippines( 2021)Southeast Asia's longest-running communist armed revolution -- the national democratic (NatDem) revolution led by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) -- is the subject of fiction films and novels produced aboveground decades after the Marcos dictatorship, a period that covers the post-Cold War global ascendancy of neoliberal capitalism, the country's democratic transition, and the crises and recovery of the NatDem movement. These works examine the complex history of, and experiences in, the political struggle, and engage with the question of the relevance of the revolution as a project of national liberation. I refer to these works as NatDem fictions -- fictional narratives that sympathetically portray the struggle, and affirm the legitimacy of its agenda for social transformation. This thesis studies a selection of these films and novels, reflecting on their construction of revolutionary experiences. Informed by a range of theoretical resources such as Raymond Williams' notion of structures of feeling, Neferti Tadiar's conceptualisation of experience, and the writings on Party politics by scholars like Jodi Dean and J. Moufawad-Paul, I conceptualise revolutionary experiences as an emergent and transformative ensemble of social relations and practices of revolutionary subjects in the struggle against the Philippine government to transform the country's semi-colonial, semi-feudal order. Through this conceptualisation, I closely read these filmic and novelistic fictions, as they deal with a range of themes and issues such as the construction of Martial Law memory, post-EDSA revolutionary errors, Left melancholia, and contemporary neoliberal violence. My analyses position these works in dialogue with their creators, who navigate the democratic openings and counterinsurgent mechanisms that complicate cultural work in the country, as well as with an engaged public who generate their critical interpretation of these works. The thesis argues that these selected NatDem fictions mobilise a dynamic view of revolutionary experiences to foreground how revolutionary subjects overcome political crises, setbacks, and challenges, and configure their socio-political practices in ways that interact with, and address, the socio-historical developments in the Philippines in the past few decades. These imaginative articulations of the complex experiences in the struggle function to argue for the enduring legitimacy of the revolution, and serve as important oppositional culture against widespread state anti-communism. This study therefore offers an account of how filmmakers and novelists engage in political contestations about the ongoing struggle through their aboveground figurations of the transformative and emergent makings of an alternative social order in the Philippines.
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ItemA grammar of Southern Bai( 2021)Bai is the language spoken by the Bai people located in Yunnan, China and surrounding provinces. The southern dialect, Southern Bai, is spoken by approximately 500,000 people in and around the Dali Bai Autonomous prefecture. Through a descriptive linguistics framework this study provides detailed description and analysis of the phonetic, morphological, and grammatical systems within Southern Bai. Expanding on features already described in previous studies on the central dialect, considered the standard in the People’s Republic of China, this study presents further detail and description of under described features. Among these features, discussed in this study are the limited morpho-syntactic system including inflection on personal pronouns, classifier derivation from nouns, affixation, and compounding formed from right-headed modification. Aspect marking is performed via coverbs grammaticalised from lexical verbs and sentence final pragmatic particles play a major role in the formation of non-declarative sentences. In addition to describing the linguistic systems of the language, a secondary aim was to explore how speakers express motion and placement events, which can be found in Chapter Ten. Based on this description, this study argues that Southern Bai should be considered a satellite-framed language according to Talmy’s (1985, 2000, 2007) typology. This thesis represents the first comprehensive study of Southern Bai. As such, the findings of this study can contribute to the greater typological discussions surrounding the world’s languages.
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ItemWomen in Islam: How Australian Muslim Feminist women practise their faith in a gender-positive way( 2021)This thesis researches how Australian Muslim feminist women practise their faith in a gender-positive way. The practical aspect of Islamic feminism in the Australian context has been under-researched within the Islamic Studies discipline, despite the growing popularity of pro-faith feminism. This research seeks to understand how Muslim feminist women have challenged and reframed traditionally patriarchal practices and interpretations of their faith in order to support or form their belief in divinely sanctioned gender equality. The position of women in Islam is a topic fraught with disagreement and controversy. While many Muslims argue that God has proclaimed men and women to be equal, others declare that the Qur’an and Muhammad’s sunnah place men in a position of superiority over women. Some Muslim women argue that Islamic practices that favour male superiority are not due to the Qur’an placing men in a position of authority. Rather, they are due to the tradition of men interpreting the foundational texts and imbuing within them a patriarchal bias. Muslim women are challenging this convention through interpreting the texts themselves from a feminist perspective. The result of these changing interpretations is a version of Islam that empowers women and encourages gender equality. Yet there are some controversial aspects of Islam - for example, Qur’an verse 4:34, often known as “the beating verse” - that present more of a challenge than others in being reinterpreted as gender-positive. This thesis, therefore, addresses these aspects of the faith that have traditionally been utilised to support male superiority and patriarchal practices. Due to the paucity of existing research on this topic in the Australian context, this research relies heavily on independent fieldwork in the form of semi-structured interviews. This thesis utilises the theoretical framework of standpoint feminism, which places women’s lived experiences as central to understanding society and for challenging patriarchal knowledge paradigms. Through employing a feminist standpoint as a theoretical framework, this research presents a counter-narrative to the persistent characterisation of the Muslim woman as an oppressed, agentless being who needs to be ‘saved’ from her culture. In order to challenge patriarchal practices within Muslim communities, the voices of Muslim women presenting an alternative, yet equally legitimate interpretation of the faith must be amplified.
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ItemMental illness manga in contemporary Japan: patients (tojisha) as knowledge producers( 2021)The thesis aims at exploring lived experiences of mental illness in contemporary Japan by looking at the manga created by those with direct experiences (tojisha). The manga analysed were all published in the period after the inclusion of psychiatric patients in the employment quota in 2018. Written by mental health tojisha, or those who self-identify as living with mental health challenges, these works provide insight into the authors’ subjective experiences of mental illness, as well as diverse ways of coexisting with disability and moving forward. They reflect not only personal experiences but recent mental health care transitions to community-based care and policy reforms that support tojisha’s independent living. Tojisha narratives revealed that individuals’ illness journeys are unique, depending on their circumstances. To convey their subjective psychological experiences and reclaim their selfhood from homogenising medical diagnosis, authors use metaphors and other storytelling devices. However, some commonalities in how mental illness is lived and negotiated in the authors’ daily lives were observed. The manga provided insight into different aspects of illness experiences including (1) how illness affects tojisha’s sense of self and how tojisha (re)construct their identities through graphic narratives; (2) how illness symptoms affect tojisha’s daily functioning; (3) how tojisha experience medical encounters and healthcare institutions; (4) how the social networks respond to tojisha’s condition and how societal responses affect tojisha; (5) what kind of treatment and self-care strategies tojisha engage in to manage their condition; (6) how the Internet is used in contemporary illness management; (7) how illness affects tojisha’s employment participation and what systems of support are available to encourage tojisha’s independent living; (8) how gender and sex shape tojisha’s illness experiences. Through graphic storytelling, the authors not only reconstruct their identities disrupted by illness, but provide readers companionship, useful information, and tips for navigating illness. By being useful to peers, the authors transform from patients to what Frank (1995) termed “wounded healers”. By presenting the richness of embodied experiential knowledge found in tojisha manga, the thesis argues for the importance of listening to the voices of mental health patients who have historically been underrepresented and misrepresented. Their manga represents a valuable source of knowledge not only for peers and caregivers but medical professionals, scholars, and policymakers.