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Indonesian studies as a field is strongly influenced by its own social character as a community of competing and cooperating scholars. Outside individual universities, the dominant social form is not the powerful professor, but rather the "circle of esteem", a cluster of scholars who respect each other, cite each other's work, push each other's ideas into the academic marketplace, and, occasionally, rise to each other's defense. Circles of esteem arise because academic work has less to do with the industrial production of knowledge than with a constant search for novelty, which may arise from new sources or new uses of sources. Although novelty is prized, the value of new work is hard to judge, and it will be more easily accepted when backed by a circle of esteem. There are two effective ways to gain academic prestige outside a circle of esteem. The first is to write a standard work, a conservative strategy to create a work that will become citation fodder for others. The second way is to coin a "euphoric couplet", which is an unexpected adjective-noun combination encapsulating a previously elusive analytical truth. Euphoric couplets are easy to remember, dissociated from theory, and intriguingly ambiguous. (Crit Asian Stud/DÜI)

Abstract: The decision by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to admit Burma (Myanmar) as a member in mid-1997 seriously strained the association's relations with its dialogue partners in the West. Both European countries and the United States urged that Burma be excluded from ASEAN because of its record of suppressing democracy. ASEAN persisted with Burma's admission, however for several reasons. The association, formed in 1967 to limit outside engagement in the Southeast Asia region, did not wish to be instructed on its membership policy by the West, and especially not on the grounds of internal political practice. Many ASEAN countries also feared that Burma might fall into China's orbit if it were excluded. Some groups in ASEAN also saw Burma's resource-rich economy as a useful complement to the more developed economies further east. Although some authorities suggested that ASEAN might put pressure on Burma to improve its human-rights performance, the impact of Burma's membership seems most likely to be in the field of economic transparency and infrastructure development.