The transmission and (re)invention of tradition in Island Southeast Asia

This special issue arises from two panels presented at Euroseas 2019: ‘Performing Sumatra through cultural heritage’, convened by Alan Darmawan and Jan van der Putten, and ‘Material culture, heritage, and history in Southeast Asia’, convened by Elsa Clavé and Mulaika Hijjas. It brings together six scholars working on four countries within island Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines), united by an attention to the ways in which tradition is evoked, invoked, in some ways reinvented, and above all transmitted. This transmission, and the continuity it implies, is a recurring theme of the issue, which invites us to rethink the terms in which it takes place. While continuity may suggest a certain stability of form and content, the cases presented in this issue show that major transformations can also take place.

Tradition is here understood quite simply as a set of elements related to the past and transmitted through generations. While inspired by the idea of invented tradition proposed by Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), and taken up by some Southeast Asianists (Pemberton 1994; Dahm 1999), the contributions do not propose the same conceptual distinction between ‘invented’ tradition and ‘authentic’ custom. Our special issue proceeds from the premise that tradition and custom are intertwined and that their (re)invention is in no way a sign of falsity but a part of their definition. The articles collected here look at tradition as a dynamic set of practices which attempt to establish a continuity with the past, whatever its historical depth, and aim to show how communities – whether minority or hegemonic groups – negotiate their position in the present and maintain a sociocultural coherence despite changing conditions.

Tradition is a classical theme in Southeast Asian studies. It was one of the main concerns for the first European administrators, missionaries, and travellers in Southeast Asia who tried to grasp the basis of the societies they encountered. Indeed, understanding the mechanisms of authority – based mostly on tradition – allowed colonial rulers to penetrate an order and change it (Schulte Northolt 1994; Amoroso 2014). Tradition as a powerful tool for political leverage remains also relevant after independence, with nationalists often turning to the grandiose past for a reservoir of concepts to construct new collective identities (Kuhnt-Saptodewo et al. 1997). Imagined communities required reinvented traditions. Almost four decades after Benedict Anderson’s seminal work, research on nationalism is still productive, implying that much remains to be said on the construction of community identity in Southeast Asia. More recent research on heritage-making and collective memory in the region supports the continuing salience of appeals to the past (Waterson and Kwok 2012; Peleggi 2017). Our special issue proceeds from this line of reflection. It is grounded in the same belief that the relation to the past is an essential element in understanding not only the present reality of a society but also the direction it is taking.

The present issue proposes a collection of cases dealing with tradition as constructed by the state, or produced by people, in an attempt to show that the dynamic relations between both determine the way traditions are conceived, lived and perceived. As underlined by Alan Darmawan on the Mak Yong theatre in the Riau islands, the process of decentralisation in Indonesia has consequences which cannot only be assessed from a top-down perspective, or within the first years of its application, but run deep into issues related to tradition and identity. Clara Brakel-Papenhuyzen’s contribution, which focuses on North Sumatra, deals with the various forms of the Lacang kuning song, and emphasises the role of performers and of orality as a ‘stable’ medium of transmission, outside of any state intervention. Malay sultans, and sultans from the southern Philippines (Sulu) were, however, much influenced by competing regional powers when it came to showing traditional symbols of authority, as shown by Mulaika Hijjas and Elsa Clavé’s contributions, respectively, on the regalia of Perak and Riau-Lingga, and the dress of the Sulu sultans. The politics of identity was not only the sole preserve of rulers, and in Singapore, the ideas of modernity and exceptionalism form a context where the notion of tradition has been used, enhanced or contested, but not always in a straightforward way, as demonstrated by Darryl Lim on 19th-century book printing. Tradition is also, sometimes, created by scholars. In Aceh, ‘Swatow’ Zhangzhou plates bearing a ninefold design have long been held by scholarship and tradition to have been specially commissioned by the Acehnese rulers. Annabel Gallop demonstrates that the plates were in fact present in Aceh before the 17th century ‘ninefold seal’ was created, reversing the direction of influence.

In all the above mentioned cases, state or authoritative discourse has not always been simply accepted or rejected, and the articles collected here contribute a more nuanced understanding of the practice of traditions. Our aim is neither to establish which cultural production is ancient and which more recent, nor is it to discuss the idea of authenticity. Instead, we concentrate on the process of creation and expression as dynamic, evolving, and worthy of being understood on their own terms. How, when, by whom and for what purpose was a particular object, song, or dress style alleged to be connected to the distant past? What is the semiotic vocabulary and how it is reused? To what extent are the actors aware that they are engaged in reinventing tradition, and does that matter? Finally, does Hobsbawm’s distinction between authentic custom and invented tradition really hold up in the Southeast Asian context?

These questions guide the contributions which present cases where tradition is reinvented to legitimate status and authority or create a system of values presented as cultural heritage. The collection as a whole offers a wide-ranging view of the implications of the use of tradition with respect to material culture and performance in contemporary maritime Southeast Asia.