APSSR Volume 17 Number 2
From the Editor
Author: Romeo B. Lee
Preliminaries
Structure or Relationship? Rethinking Family Influences on Juvenile Delinquency in Malaysia
Authors: Tan Bee Piang, Zuraini Jamil Osman and Noor Banu Mahadir
Research Article
Pages: 171-184
A broken family structure and poor family relationship are seen as contributing to delinquent behavior in different ways. Despite Malaysian society being strongly focused on family values, there have been significant increases in the rates of both divorce and single-parent families. Thus, there is the question of whether these changes in family structure are a contributing factor to the increasing rate of juvenile delinquency seen in recent years. This study aims to examine the relative influences of family structure and family relationship on juvenile delinquent behavior in Malaysia. A sample of 196 juveniles from two rehabilitation centers in Malaysia participated in this study. The study finds that there are no significant correlations between family structure and juvenile delinquent behavior. The data show that a significant percentage of juveniles are not from broken families. Most, however, do experience a poor-quality family relationship.
Keywords: Malaysian juvenile, delinquent behavior, family structure, family relationship
Skin Beauty as Erotic Capital and Production of “Luckiness”: A Look at Menopausal Women Using Hormone Therapy Replacement for Skin Treatment in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Authors: Huynh Thi Xuan Tam, Pimpawun Boonmongkon, Xiaochuan Wang and Thomas E. Guadamuz
Research Article
Pages: 185-195
According to social and cultural constructs of aging and femininity, menopausal women‘s bodily transitions cause them to initiate hormone therapy replacement (HRT) to restore their youth and beauty. For example, they might take HRT to improve their wrinkled and sagging skin. A problem emerges, however, because there is little systematic research that explains the specific factors that motivate women to take HRT for the purpose of anti-aging skin treatment. This study aims to examine the intertwined social and cultural contexts influencing menopausal women’s choice of HRT in a dermatological hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Four dermatologists and 15 menopausal women patients were interviewed regarding their experiences with HRT. Results suggest that skin conditions are closely related with Vietnamese notions of femininity, sexuality, youth, health, and beauty. An ideal skin condition carries cultural auspiciousness, sexual attractiveness, and a positive indication of health. Use of HRT does not merely aim at improving skin condition but also at maintaining beauty and overcoming sexual dysfunction in general—to fix the body from inside. The emphasis on the ideal skin as the key to beauty, sexuality, youth, and social and physical well-being reflects how the female body has been influenced by a social and cultural construction of menopause. While fitting the traditional paradigm of “improving from within,” HRT also repairs women’s sense of luckiness by removing wrinkles, which are perceived as bringing bad luck to family and business. This notion of being lucky enables menopausal women to rebuild their social-sexual agency without being judged against the moral norms for well-behaved older women when they reach menopause.
Keywords: femininity, hormone replacement therapy, menopause, skin beauty, Vietnam
Climate Adaptation, Technological Self-Reliance, and the Developing World: Evidence From an Emerging Economy
Authors: Rodolfo Calzado Jr. and Jose Santos Carandang VI
Research Article
Pages: 214-238
Despite good intentions, development assistance from donor countries are often underutilized by recipient nations due to weak absorptive capacities. Addressing this issue has become more imperative with recent international accords engendering the rapid influx of massive climate assistance funds into the developing world. Particularly, interventions are focused on addressing exceptional vulnerabilities of developing nations to near-term climate impacts, for example, devastating typhoons and associated hazards. Fundamental to this effort is establishing the necessary technology infrastructure for generating quality climatic and environmental information, which serves as valuable logistical support for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management plans and activities. Efforts to address this in developing countries, however, are often sluggish or met with gridlocks. This is despite following internationally-prescribed best-practice roadmaps, conditioned by access to foreign aid. The Philippines’ experience in implementing its technological self-reliance policy provides a possible framework for overcoming this difficulty. Contribution analysis, through dissecting and examining the policy implementation period of 2010–2015, reveals that a more cooperative sociopolitical landscape, engendered by the visibility of a program “championing” the country’s drive to break away from technological dependence, can provoke rapid technological catch-up, bringing about the desired transformation.
Keywords: policy analysis, evaluation, technology catch-up, research, foreign aid, international assistance, climate change, political economy, sociopolitical change, Copenhagen accord, Philippines
Doomed to Separate: A Neoclassical Realist Perspective of the Third India–Pakistan War of 1971 and Independence of Bangladesh
Author: Shafiqur Rahman
Research Article
Pages: 214-238
Within South Asian politics and society, events of the year 1971 with the bloody military crackdown on East Pakistan, the third India–Pakistan war, and subsequent emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country, still hold a living and outsized presence. Most popular historical accounts of the events argue that the separation of the two halves of Pakistan was not an inevitable outcome but a product of contingency, world historical developments, and choices made by political actors. In this paper, I argue from a perspective of Neoclassical Realist theory of international policy-making that not only the separation of the two halves of Pakistan was highly predisposed but also a violent parting was highly likely. I also argue that contingent and individual choice-based accounts of the events in 1971 help perpetuate misperception and friction in current politics of the subcontinent. Accepting the inevitability of the emergence of Bangladesh would go a long way in normalizing relations between the three large countries of South Asia.
Keywords: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India–Pakistan War, realism, Neoclassical Realism
A Critical Ethnographic Study on Betel Quid Dependence Among Young Men in Mandalay, Myanmar
Authors: Thida Moe, Pimpawun Boonmongkon, Xiaochuan Wang, Darunee Phukao, Timo T. Ojanen and Thomas E. Guadamuz
Research Article
Pages: 239-248
Betel quid is a carcinogenic psychoactive preparation, often containing tobacco, which is widely consumed in Myanmar. Studies on betel quid dependence have illuminated betel quid chewers’ demographics and reasons for chewing, but dependence formation is not fully understood. This study aims to describe the social context, patterns of use, and subjective experiences of betel quid chewing among novice and dependent chewers, and to analyze the hidden structural factors that contribute to the emergence of betel quid dependence. Data on the subjective and objective aspects of betel quid chewing were collected through a five-month ethnographic study in Mandalay, Myanmar. Betel quid chewers were recruited for in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The data were analyzed within a critical medical anthropology framework. Male betel quid chewers begin to chew out of curiosity and social pressure. They believe that chewing boosts their sexual attractiveness and increases their negotiation power with peers and family. Dependence develops when chewers continue chewing beyond the initiation stage. Chewing is used as a social lubricant that enhances social gatherings and work activities. Weak law enforcement and the need for employment among the unskilled rural population encourage the emergence of betel quid economies. Betel quid is used as a drug food to facilitate hard work and to self-medicate suffering caused by exploitative socioeconomic conditions. Betel quid chewing becomes indispensable as a part of the chewer’s habitus. The economic conditions of chewers need to be improved and community-based programs initiated to discourage early initiation of betel quid chewing.
Keywords: Betel quid, critical medical anthropology, ethnography, Myanmar, smokeless tobacco, young men
Low-Cost Carrier Passenger Repurchase Intention: A Structural Equation Model Analysis
Authors: Sujira Vuthisopon and Chalita Srinuan
Research Article
Pages: 249-266
Low-cost carrier (LCC) aviation has exploded globally, which now represents 26% of all passenger seats, while in Southeast Asia LCC passengers have soared to 54%. The purpose of this research was, therefore, to develop and examine the accuracy of a structural equation model of the factors affecting repurchase intention of low-cost carrier passengers in Thailand. Convenience sampling was utilized to obtain a sample of 440 individuals from four Thai low-cost carriers, including Thai AirAsia, Nok Air, Thai Lion Air (Don Muang Airport-DMK), and Thai Smile Airways (Suvarnabhumi Airport-BKK) in 2016. To examine the study’s five latent and 22 observed variables, a 97-item survey was used. Results from the study determined the positive and significant influences that customer satisfaction has on customer loyalty, followed by electronic service quality on customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction on repurchase intention, respectively.
Keywords: airline passengers, aviation, budget airline, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, electronic service quality, open skies, service quality
Senkaku/Diaoyu Island Dispute and the Reconstruction of China as Japan’s “Other”
Author: Michal Kolmaš
Research Article
Pages: 267-280
In the recent years, much has been written about Japan’s security “normalization,” that is, the resurgence of Japan as a “proactive contributor to world peace.” This article aims to add to this debate, but it will approach it from a novel angle. Basing its epistemology in critical security studies, I investigate the relationship between national identity and Japan’s foreign policy (i.e., its normalization). The article dismisses realist assumptions that Japan’s security rejuvenation is a reaction to the changing balance of power in Asia. Rather, it argues that the normalization is a product of Japan’s discursive practice of victimization, that is, situating itself as a victim of foreign pressure. The identity of a victim is reproduced through the practice of “othering”—differentiating from various “others.” For most parts of the 20th century, the United States served as the focal other to Japan’s self-identification. In the last two decades, however, Japan’s identity has become practiced through differentiation to China. The article illustrates this process on the case study of Japan’s primary discourse on the Senkaku/Diaoyu island dispute of 2010 through 2014. Japan’s narrative on the dispute has managed to depict China as a coercive, immoral and abnormal state that bullies subsequently weak, coerced, but moral and lawful Japan. By writing Japan as a coerced, yet lawful state protecting the status quo, Tokyo succeeded in persuading the United States to subdue the disputed territory under its nuclear umbrella. Through the process of victimization of a weak Japan then, the Prime Minister Abe Shinzo managed to propagate the new security legislature as a means of reconstruction of Japan from weak to a normal state.
Keywords: Japan, China, identity, revisionism, normalization, discourse
Comparative Analysis of WW II Japanese Comfort Women and Its Derivative Contemporary Filipina Transnational Prostituted Women System
Authors: P. C. Kutschera, Marie A. Caputi, Benigno Jr Legamia, and Elena C. Tesoro
Research Brief
A Theoretical Analysis of Non-formal Education as a Social Movement for Change in Thailand
Authors: John Draper and Pennee Kantavong
Research Brief
Exploring Antecedents to Thai Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Organizational Performance
Authors: Kitti Kiatsuranon and Opal Suwunnamek
Research Brief
Combatting ASEAN Human Trafficking: A Regional Process and Challenges
Author: Nopraenue Sajjarax Dhirathiti
Research Brief
Local Governments in the Digital Era
Authors: Yossathorn Taweephon, Nopraenue Sajjarax Dhirathiti, Somsak Amornsiriphong
Research Brief
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