volume-16-number-2

Author: Romeo B. Lee

Year: 2016, Volume 16 Number 2

Pages: 1-15

The 17th and the 18th-century French travellers’ and adventurers’ perceptions about the Hindu socio-religious beliefs, practices, and myths have always been a relatively un-researched but fascinating area. This article, based on a study of their memoirs (both translated and un-translated), purports to analyze their perceptions of and observations on three specific aspects of the Hindu socio-religious world in North India during the Mughal period, namely, idol worship, reverence of cow, and Ganga. Objective of this article is to comprehend French travellers’ vision towards identity formation of idol worship, its sacredness, and the practices attached to promulgate its belief among Hindus in northern India during the period of research. One discerns the unexplored reasons for devotional proliferation of idol worship, their propagators, and means adapted to glorify its principles. Further, the article intents to examine the discourse of dissemination of superstitious practices attached to Hindu doctrine of metempsychosis in regard to cow being revered as a sacred animal. An attempt has been made to scrutinize the sanctified effects of sacred water of river Ganga as well as its relevance in the life of the Hindus. One tried to research the French perspective about reasons given by Hindus to consider Ganga as the most revered river and elucidated by varied myths, illusions, and sagas to consider it as a symbol of purity. Similar rituals practiced at Jagannath temple in Puri are explored in order to analyze them through French travellers’ eyes. Efforts are made to reflect how European Western culture comprehend the Orient’s varied socio-religious beliefs and “superstitious” ideologies in relation to Hinduism practiced in northern India.

Keywords: French travellers and adventurers, Idol worship, Divinity of Cow, Holy Ganga, Jagannath temple, Social taboos, superstitious beliefs, Mughal Empire, 17th and 18th centuries

Pages: 39-47

The key to understanding any social phenomenon is to follow how actors tread the social landscape and describe how they form groups, fuse meanings, and create associations with different frames. In this paper, I employ Bruno Latour’s reconceptualization of assemblage to trace how NGOs and other actors create assemblages by fusing or defusing dog-eating with discourses on dirt, epidemic, and human rights. More specifically, NGOs such as Linis Gobyerno and Animal Kingdom Foundation (AKF) produce assemblages that align dog-eating with sanitation, violence, and epidemic. Conversely, supporters of the practice try to invert these claims by foregrounding dog-meat consumption as an entitlement that is protected by both local and international legal codes. This paper also engages with previous attempts to analyze dog-eating and their failure to deal with the quotidian ways in which actors bundle the practice with multiple frames. Rather than presupposing how peoples’ discursive understanding of food as inflections of deep binary-oppositions, or an epiphenomenon of productive forces, I opine that we must refocus on how actors themselves interpret contentious food practices by following their action in a flattened social world.

Keywords: Assemblage, Northern Philippines, Dog-eating, Food, Bruno Latour, Social Analysis

Pages: 39-47

This study investigates some of the key social factors associated with mental health by focusing on the role of social capital defined in terms of two related yet distinct variables: general trust and social support (from kin and non-kin members). Data from the 2010 Korean General Social Survey (KGSS), which consists of a nationally representative sample, are analyzed to empirically examine the associations between the two social capital measures and self-rated mental health. Given the clustered structure of the data, multilevel or hierarchical linear models are estimated. While controlling for a host of socioeconomic and other background variables, individuals who have greater trust in generalized others (i.e., strangers) and those who receive more support from non-family members report themselves as being mentally healthier. Help from kin, on the other hand, has no significant effect. The current research suggests that there are critical social determinants of health, which are important for improving and maintaining mental well-being for the Korean adult population.

Keywords: precarious mental health, social capital, general trust, network ties, multilevel analysis, Korea

Pages: 49-64

The aim of this study was to learn about rates of witnessing violence among high school students in Thailand, with special emphasis on the country’s Southern Muslim provinces where ongoing terror reflects their struggle for independence. Seventh to 10th grade students were randomly sampled from three areas of Thailand, representing inner cities, rural areas, and the Muslim-dominated South. The sample consisted of 1,305 youths: 763 (58.5%) females. Rates of witnessing violence are high among Thai youths, and are similar to those reported in the USA. The highest rates were found in the Southern Muslim provinces, especially in their homes and communities, and were higher among males than among females. The rural areas scored high on some of the witnessing violence variables, reflecting the changes taking place in the rural areas of Thailand. The results were analyzed in light of political, religious and cultural reasons related to youth witness violence in Thailand.

Keywords: violence, youth, cultural and political influences, Muslim, Thailand

Pages: 65-82

Agrarian policy trends from 1956 to 1983 emerged from a legitimation process amplified by both the revolutionary background and factional politics of the People’s Republic of China. However, the process is not clear-cut but is characterized by an interweaving of various factors, specifically, factional politics, legitimacy, and the results and thrusts of agrarian policies. Thus, this paper asks the question, “what are the dimensions of policy legitimation that framed the publicized struggle of competing elites for policy content and consistency?” To shed light on this issue, this paper would make more specific inquiries on the nature of the relationship between publicized factional elite competition at the national level and the struggle for policy consistency via policy legitimation. This study’s primary theoretical objective is to develop a bridge between the literatures on elite competition and regime legitimacy through a processual analysis of policy legitimation. Hence, this study’s primary objective is not to establish causality but to illustrate that it is in policy legitimation that elite competition collides with public sentiments emanating from the impact of objective conditions.

Keywords: Chinese politics, elite competition, factionalism, legitimacy, legitimation

Authors: Supaporn Pouncgchompu, Kobayashi Hajime, and Supawadee Chantanop

Research Brief

Year 2016, Volume 16 Number 2
Pages: 85-93

Author: Sofa Marwah

Research Brief

Year 2016, Volume 16 Number 2
Pages: 95-100

Author: Shih-Hsiung Liu

Research Brief

Year 2016, Volume 16 Number 2
Pages: 101-111

Author: Mark Stephan Felix

Research Brief

Year 2016, Volume 16 Number 2
Pages: 113-119