Exile

Prologue term local immersion, and therefore one with a checkered history of exits and absences from particular countries and regions in the world.8 But, to repeat, such intensive and extended involvement with Southeast Asia-any part of it-has never been mine.Moving quickly in and out of the region at various times over the decades, and even reading this book now, I have been a parachute anthropologist, not an area specialist.Yet I also know that in parachutist journalism, the visiting newsperson, in his or her hunting and gathering efforts, is very dependent on finding one or more "fixers"people with extensive local knowledge, not least those with a good overview of who is who in local society.A fixer is, to use again one of those anthropological terms with Southeast Asian origins, a kind of "cultural broker."Indeed, in no small part, the skill of a foreign correspondent lies in the ability to identify and make good use of the best fixers at hand.But finding such fixers is to a degree also a matter of luck.I count myself lucky, in this case, to be allowed to benefit from the insights of Joshua Barker, Erik Harms, and Johan Lindquist-and all the informants, the "sources," whom they have in their turn recruited. FOR PERSONAL USE ONLYA figure, in its most basic sense, refers to "a person as an object of mental contemplation."The term "figure" also refers variously to someone of rank, someone respected, or someone outlandish in some aspect.3 In short, a figure is someone whom others recognize as standing out and who encourages FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY gent concerns with self-cultivation and self-fashioning.If neoliberalism is a form of rule that leads the individual to cultivate and govern the self in accordance with liberal ideals, 44 then nowhere are its effects more conspicuous than in the rise of market-based solutions to higher education.Even as education continues to serve as an important means of class differentiation, it has become increasingly internationalized and has acquired critical importance as a marketplace for neoliberal self-fashioning.Dramatic improvements in literacy rates and the institutionalization of primary and secondary education have been followed by the ascent of English, computer, design, and business schools, which dot cities and provincial towns across the region.Neverthelesss, the high cost of tuition at colleges and universities continues to act as a barrier to the vast majority of people.Even those who can FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY courses of modernity.They speak about the loss of grand narratives, an opening to the foreign, a blurring of old status and class distinctions, an embracing and intensification of capitalism and mass media, and a reworking of the politics of connection.In making concrete the contemporary, these various figures help us to sort out exactly what is at stake across Southeast Asia today. FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY How to Read the BookAs processes of globalization have come to reshape Southeast Asia in recent decades, academic debates have intensified with regard to the withering away of the nation-state and the problematic legacy of area studies.Organizing this volume according to the region's major nation-states arguably marginalizes FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY

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