Geography 484

1

• Geography 484
• Southeast Asia
• Jim Glassman
• Lecture 9a
• October 29, 2008

2
Discussion Question

• Are there Asian values? If so, what are they
  and what makes them Asian? If not, why not?

3
The Asian values debate

• Cultural relativism as plank (Asian societies
  more hierarchical, less individualistic than the
  West)
• Importance of the strong state
• Importance of the strong family unit
• Lee Kuan Yews deployment of Asian values
• Mahathirs appropriation of Asian values

4
The Asian values debate and Lee Kuan Yew

• Lee on social discipline
• Lee on the counter-culture
• Lee on womens role in society
• Lee on genetics

5
Lee on Social Discipline

• I have enumerated in several of my talks what I
  consider to be the three basic essentials for
  successful transformation of any society. First,
  a determined leadership, an effective determined
  leadership two, an administration which is
  efficient and three, social disciplineIf you
  dont get social discipline, everybody does what
  he likes to do, or will not bustle about what he
  is told to do.
• (cited in Barr, 2000, p. 316)

6
Mill on enforced industrial labor

• Again, uncivilized races, and the bravest and
  most energetic still more than the rest, are
  averse to continuous labour of an unexciting
  kind. Yet all real civilization is at this
  price without such labour, neither can the mind
  be disciplined into the habits required by
  civilized society, nor the material world
  prepared to receive it. There needs a rare
  concurrence of circumstances, and for that reason
  often a vast length of time, to reconcile such a
  people to industry, unless they are for a while
  compelled to it. Hence even personal slavery, by
  giving a commencement to industrial life, and
  enforcing it as the exclusive occupation of the
  most numerous proportion of the community, may
  accelerate the transition to a better freedom
  than that of fighting and rapine. (1962, 40)

7
Lee on leadership and the herd

• You can have a great leader, but if the herd
  has not got it in it, you cannot make the grade.
  The herd must have the capacity, the stamina, the
  sufficient social cohesiveness to survive.
• (cited in Barr, 2000, p. 316)

8
Mill on the need for despotism

• The state of different communities, in point of
  culture and development, ranges downward to a
  condition very little above the highest of the
  beastsa people in a state of savage
  independence, in which everyone lives by himself,
  exempt, unless by fits, from any external
  control, is practically incapable of making any
  progress until it has learnt to obey. The
  indispensable virtue, therefore, in a government
  which establishes itself over a people of this
  sort is, that it make itself obeyed. To enable
  it to do this, the constitution of the government
  must be nearly, or quite, despotic. (1962, 38-9)

9
Lee on social order and democracy

• We would be foolish to try and beguile
  ourselves with unsophisticated phrases of
  democracy and liberty and human rights and
  freedom, while we go down the drain.
• (cited in Barr, 2000, p. 323)

10
Mill on India and colonialism

• Thus far, I have spoken of the neo-British
  dependencies whose population is in a
  sufficiently advanced state to be fitted for
  representative government. But there are others
  which have not attained that state, and which, if
  held at all, must be governed by the dominant
  country, or by persons delegated for that purpose
  by it. This mode of government is as legitimate
  as any other, if it is the one which in the
  existing state of civilization of the subject
  people, most facilitates their transition to a
  higher state of improvement. (1962, 345-6)

11
US Cold Warriors on Asia

• By tradition and preference Asiatic people turn
  to authoritarian government. In contrast with
  us, they lack historical experience of liberty
  and personal experience of individualismThey are
  particularly susceptible to the seizure of
  political power by force or assassination and to
  the concealed aggression of communism.
• NSC 48, 31 August draft

12
US Cold Warriors on Thailand

• We need notfeel self-conscious about our
  support for an authoritarian government in
  Thailand based almost entirely on military
  strengthbecause aside from the practical
  matter of Thailands not being ready for a truly
  democratic form of governmentthe United States
  derives political support from the Thai
  government to an extent and degree which would be
  hard to match elsewhere.
• - Alexis Johnson, 1958

13
Lee on development and democracy

• A country must first have economic
  development, then democracy may follow. With a
  few exceptions, democracy has not brought good
  government to new developing countries. Democracy
  has not led to development because the
  governments did not establish stability and
  discipline necessary for development.
• (cited in Barr, 2000, p. 324)

14
Mill on Free Trade

• But though Great Britain could do perfectly
  well without her coloniesthere are strong
  reasons for maintaining the present slight bond
  of connexionIt at least keeps the markets of the
  different countries open to one another, and
  prevents that mutual exclusion by hostile
  tariffs, which none of the great communities of
  mankind, except England, have yet outgrown.
  (1962, 342)

15
Huntington on development and democracy

• The primary problem is not liberty but the
  creation of a legitimate public order Authority
  has to exist before it can be limited, and it is
  authority that is in scarce supply in those
  modernizing countries where government is at the
  mercy of alienated intellectuals, rambunctious
  colonels, and rioting students.
• (Political Order in Changing Societies, pp. 7-8)

16
Lee on the 1960s US

• If they are to develop, people in new countries
  cannot afford to imitate the fads and fetishes of
  the contemporary West. The strange behavior of
  demonstration and violence-prone young men and
  women in wealthy America, seen on TV and the
  newspapers, are not relevant to the social and
  economic circumstances of new underdeveloped
  countries. The importance of education, the need
  of stability and work disciplinethese are vital
  factors for progress.
• (cited in Barr, 2000, p. 319)

17
Huntington on the 1960s US

• some of the problems in the of governance in
  the United States today stem from an excess of
  democracy Needed, instead, is a greater degree
  of moderation in democracy The effective
  operation of a democratic political system
  usually requires some measure of apathy and
  noninvolvement on the part of some individuals
  and groups Democracy will have a longer life if
  it has a more balanced existence.
• (The Crisis of Democracy, pp. 113-115)

18
Lee on the counter-culture and the family

• We have to reject the passing fads of the West.
  Particularly important are intra-family
  relationships. We must reinforce these
  traditional family ties found in all Asian
  societies.
• (cited in Barr, 2000, p. 319)

19
Lee on womens role

• There are almost no substitutes for the
  nurturing and nourishing a child receives from
  his or her parents, principally the motherSo I
  rejoiced when I read that nearly 50 of our
  university undergraduates are women. For this
  augers well for the next generation. Later on,
  there will be other problems, such as the
  conflict between home and work. The creche and
  the kindergarten are inadequate substitutes for
  the home

20
Lee on womens role (cont.)

• Perhaps we shall have to learn, like the
  advanced societies, that the investment a country
  puts into its women does not give the same kinds
  of returns one expects to get from male citizens.
  For five to seven years after marriage there may
  be a hiatus in the economic returns as the women
  devote most of their time to rearing the family.
• (cited in Barr, 2000, p. 325)

21
Lee on birth control

• By all means the pill to keep the birth rate
  down. But must it lead to promiscuity, venereal
  diseases, exhibitionism and a breakdown in the
  family unit? I do not have all the answers. I can
  only hope that the pill plus the traditional
  importance of the Asian family unit, where
  paternity is seldom in doubt, can prevent the
  excesses from imitating contemporary Western
  sexual mores.
• (cited in Barr, 2000, p. 325)

22
Lee on cultural eugenics

• In the older Chinese generations, economics
  and culture settled it. The pattern of
  procreation was settled by economics and culture.
  The richer you are, the more successful you are,
  the more wives you have, the more children you
  have.
• (cited in Barr, 1999, p. 159)

23
Lee on the X factor

• Three women were brought to the Singapore
  General Hospital, each in the same condition and
  each needing a blood transfusion. The first, a
  Southeast Asian, was given the transfusion but
  died a few hours later. The second, a South
  Asian, was also given a transfusion but died a
  few days later. The third, an East Asian, was
  given the transfusion and survived. That is the
  X factor in development.
• (cited in Barr, 1999, p. 145)

24
Lee on intelligence

• The Bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks
  on average score 85 per cent on IQ and it is
  accurate, nothing to do with culture. The whites
  score on average 100. Asians score morethe Bell
  curve authors put it at least 10 points higher.
  These are realities that, if you do not accept,
  will lead to frustration because you will be
  spending money on wrong assumptions and the
  results cannot follow.
• (cited in Barr, 1999, p. 149)

25
Lee on equality

• I started off believing all men were equal. I
  now know thats the most unlikely thing ever to
  have been, because millions of years have passed
  over evolution, people have scattered across the
  face of this earth, been isolated from each
  other, developed independently, had different
  intermixtures between races, peoples, climates,
  soils.
• (cited in Barr, 1999, p. 151)

26
Lee on climate and culture

• One the Chinese is the product of a
  civilisation which has gone through all its ups
  and downs, of floods and famine and pestilence,
  breeding a people with very intense culture, with
  a belief in high performance, in sustained
  effort, in thrift and industry. And the other
  people the Malay, more fortunately endowed by
  nature, with warm sunshine and bananas and
  coconuts, and therefore not with the same need to
  strive so hard...

27
Lee on climate(cont.)

• Now, these two societies really move at two
  different speeds. Its like the difference
  between a high-revolution engine and a
  low-revolution engine. Im not saying that one
  is better or less good than the other. But Im
  just stating a fact that one was the product of
  another environment, another history, another
  civilisation, and the other is a product of
  another different climate, different history.
• (cited in Barr, 1999, p. 153)

28
Fisher on Chinese and Southeast Asians

• In contrast to the response of the Chinesein
  an altogether less exhausting climatewhich
  manifests itself as an almost instinctive
  compulsion to work oneself to the bone in order
  at all costs to survive, the more typical
  attitude of the South-east Asian peasant, at
  least until recently, has been no less obviously
  related to his experience that, in the words of
  the Siamese proverb, there is fish in the river
  and rice in the field and that, this being so,
  it is generally wisest to take things easily in
  this humid tropical climate, where to obtain a
  reasonable modicum of comfort does not call for
  any great abundance of material possessions.
• Fisher (1964, p. 762)

29
Lee on Malay culture

• these were not cultures which created
  societies capable of intense discipline,
  concentrated effort, over sustained periods.
  Climate, the effects of relatively abundant
  society and the tropical conditions produced a
  people largely extrovert, easy-going and
  leisurely.
• (cited in Barr, 1999, p. 154)

30
Fisher on lazy Southeast Asians

• there is another side to this picture, and
  although it is impossible to pronounce with
  scientific accuracy upon the more elusive aspects
  of racial character, it would be even less
  scientific to ignore the widespread comments of
  foreign observers, fellow-Asians as well as
  Westerners, regarding the existence, if not the
  cause, of the characteristic insouciance and the
  addiction to an adagio tempo of living which
  prevail among these extremely likable people.
• Fisher (1964, p. 7)

31
Lee on the tropics and genetics

• There is only one other civilization near the
  Equator that ever produced anything worthy of its
  name. That was the Yucatan peninsula of South
  America - the Mayan Civilization. There is no
  other place where human beings were able to
  surmount the problems of a soporific equatorial
  climate. You can go along the Equator or 2
  degrees north of it, and they all sleep after
  half past two - if they have a good meal. They
  do! Otherwise they must die. It is only in
  Singapore that they dont. And there were good
  reasons for this. First, good glands, and second,
  good purpose.
• (cited in Barr, 199, p. 154)

32
Fisher on the Vietnamese exception

• The toughness of the Vietnamese, particularly
  the northerners, may be explained in terms not
  only of Sinicization but also of long-standing
  pressure of people on the land comparable to that
  of China proper, and perhaps also in part of a
  climatic regime which is unique to South-east
  Asia in possessing a recognizable cool season.
• Fisher (1964, p. 763)

33
Lee on Mahatir

• I found myself in agreement with
  three-quarters of his analysis of the problem -
  that the Malays had always withdrawn from
  competition and never really entered into the
  mainstream of economic activity that the Malays
  would always get their children or relatives
  married off, regardless of whether it was good or
  bad.
• (cited in Barr, 1999, p. 159)

34
Mahathirs appropriation of Asian values

• General context
• Bumiputra program
• Opposition to Washington consensus
• Look East
• Opposition to labor unions, human rights
  criticisms, etc.