Asia Institute - Research Publications
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ItemSouth Borneo as an ancient Sprachbund area(UNIV INDONESIA, FAC HUMANITIES, 2021-01-01)In South and Central Kalimantan (southern Borneo) there are some unusual linguistic features shared among languages which are adjacent but do not belong to the same genetic linguistic subgroups. These languages are predominantly Banjar Malay (a Malayic language), Ngaju (a West Barito language), and Ma’anyan (a Southeast Barito language). The same features also appear to some degree in Malagasy, a Southeast Barito language in East Africa. The shared linguistic features are the following ones: a grammaticalized form of the originally Malay noun buah ‘fruit’ expressing affectedness, nasal spreading in which N- not only nasalizes the onset of the first syllable but also a *y in the next syllable, a non-volitional marker derived from the Banjar Malay prefix combination ta-pa- (related to Indonesian tr- + pr-), and the change from Proto Malayo-Polynesian *s to h (or Malagasy Ø). These features have their origins in the various members of the language configuration outlined above and form a Sprachbund or “Linguistic Area”. The concept of Linguistic Area is weak and difficult to define. Lyle Campbell (2002) considers it little else than borrowing or diffusion and writes it off as “no more than [a] post hoc attempt [...] to impose geographical order on varied conglomerations of [...] borrowings”. While mindful of its shortcomings, the current author still uses the concept as a useful tool to distinguish between
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ItemA Historical-Contextualist Approach to the Joseph Chapter of the Qur’an(Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2022-01-01)Abstract This article applies a historical-contextualist approach to analyzing the Joseph sūra of the Qur’an. It first explores the theoretical framework of this study and introduces the historical-contextualist methodology employed and then provides a brief explanation of the Qur’anic account of the story of Joseph. The Joseph sūra is analyzed in light of the context of its revelation and the use it makes of fundamental Qur’anic teachings. This article demonstrates that the revelation of the sūra of Joseph was closely related to the sociopolitical context in which Muhammad and the Muslims lived, and that the sūra highlights several fundamental theological teachings of the Qur’an, including God’s unity and omnipotence, revelation and prophethood, and the afterlife, all themes emphasized in earliest sūras of the Qur’an including those revealed before the Joseph sūra.
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ItemApples and oranges: Political crops with and against the state in rural China(University of Arizona, 2022-01-01)In this article we bring together conceptual threads from political ecology, commodity geographies and agrarian studies to enable an inquiry into the political nature of crops. This inquiry is underpinned by the idea that crops are not just a means or a target of political projects, but can have effects through their webs of relations, and that their different capacities might mean that they may differently engage in political projects. This article examines how specialized cash crops in rural China are enrolled in state projects. We explore the cases of orange orchards and apple orchards in different locations in Hebei by detailing flows of capital and expertise, and smallholder-crop relations. Our analysis demonstrates that a political ecology of cash crops can provide insight into the politics of successive state projects that have been rolled out in China's agricultural communities. We argue that through evolving relations with smallholders, the attributes of the crops themselves, and particular market dynamics, robust smallholder-crop complexes have emerged that are currently proving resistant to the latest state project to achieve at-scale, industrialized agriculture. If we take political crops and their relations seriously in the story of contemporary agrarian change in China, we find that apple and oranges, previously with the state, can also come to act against it.
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ItemTongzhi Sovereignty: Taiwan's lgbt Rights Movement and the Misplaced Critique of Homonationalism(Brill, 2022-01-01)Abstract This essay reviews the influential work of a group of Leftist ‘sex liberation’ scholars who pioneered queer sexuality studies in Taiwan in the 1990s. In doing so, it focuses on their post-2000 political rift with the mainstream Taiwanese lgbt (tongzhi) rights movement. What ostensibly began as a split over views of same-sex marriage has developed into a contentious politics of Chinese versus Taiwanese national identity and what I call ‘tongzhi sovereignty’. In bringing together both national identity and sexual politics in Taiwan as increasingly intertwined sites of contestation, I argue that the two must be theorised in tandem. As a fertile site for unpacking this contentious divergence, I examine and problematise the way that cultural theorist Jasbir Puar’s popular concept of homonationalism has circulated in scholarship of cultural/sexuality studies about Taiwan as a slanted and largely unchecked analytic to criticise lgbt sociolegal progress and, for some scholars, obscures a pro-unification agenda.
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ItemHistorical linguistics of the languages of Sumatra, Java, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and Moken Moklen(Oxford University Press, 2023)Critical analysis of recent literature on the classification of the (non-Malay) languages of Sumatra, Java, Bali-Lombok-Sumbawa and Moken Moklen.
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ItemIntroduction(Oxford University Press, 2023)Introduction outlining the content and structure of the book
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ItemLanguage contact in Africa(Oxford University Press, 2023)Historical overview of the contacts between Austronesian languages (Malay, Malagasy) and Bantu languages (Swahili, Comorian languages) in Eastern Africa.
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ItemMalayic languages(Oxford University Press, 2023)A typological overview of Malayic languages and dialects detailing their phonology, morphology and syntax.
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ItemPersonal pronouns(Oxford University Press, 2023)A typological overview of the free pronouns in the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia and Madagascar.
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ItemMaking “The Healing of Bali”(Monash University Publishing, 2022-11)This collection of essays is a multifaceted portrayal of Darling's years in Bali, revealing the cultural experiences that shaped him.