Suchergebnisse

Cambodia's cinema history is strange and surprising. Popular films from France and the United States circulated through the Kingdom during the French colonial period. The 1950s and 60s saw extensive local production with the enthusiastic support of King Norodom Sihanouk, himself a passionate film-maker, but the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) destroyed most of the existing material, including hundreds of feature films, raw footage and countless other ephemeral documents. In 2006, after representations by film-maker Rithy Panh and others, the Bophana Audio-Visual Research Centre was established in Phnom Penh to comb the world for every fragment of film and audio material relating to Cambodia's history in order to reproduce it in an accessible digitized form. The archival preservation and duplication has continued apace. However the ethical use of these materials presents challenges. Contemporary documentary makers and digital enthusiasts frequently use fragmentary footage to support their political or historical interpretations without attribution or context. This paper discusses a propaganda film featuring the former King Norodom Sihanouk and his wife Monique shot in1973 in collaboration with the Communist Chinese, the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge. Short scenes and extracts from this film circulate online and appear in many documentaries. The "archive effect" of this footage raises questions about the source and circulation of archival images with significant historical and political consequences.

AbstractThe cults and ritual practices of the Sino-Thai communities of southern Thailand are a distinctive aspect of a region in which Chinese heritage has a high degree of social significance. Chinese came to the Malay Peninsula in several waves; many settlers arrived as early as the sixteenth century, and others flooded into the region to work in tin-mines and rubber plantations in the nineteenth century. Although now "Thai" in many respects, the descendants of Chinese immigrants in the south retain a distinctive identity, visibly expressed in the annual ritual cycle focused on specific rites and temples. These events provide a sense of connection to ancestral origins, but also make important statements about the contemporary position of Chinese descendants in a complex multiracial context. Tourism, both national and transnational, has played an important role in the expansion of ritual performance. During the capitalist boom years of the 1990s, elements of Chinese identity became a valued social marker in Thailand and some aspects of the southern cultural and ritual practices were adopted more widely, although most of the Sino-Thai descendants outside the south had little or no understanding of the origins or meaning of the practices. This paper examines rites performed annually in two southern Thai towns, investigating how they reflect complex negotiations of ethnic identity vis-à-vis national and regional contexts.

The minority tribal groups in the border zones of Southern Thailand (the "Sakai") are often described as "disappearing" demographically while the inability to "know" them at first hand by successive interested parties (the colonial explorer, the naturalist, the government official) has been attributed to their ability to disappear into the jungle, seemingly without a trace. This paper discusses the way the "Sakai" have faded in and out of ethnology and Thai public consciousness, due in part to their own survival imperatives, and in part to the character of Thai state and society. (J Southeast Asian Stud/GIGA)

SummaryThis study examines data from 15,172 episodes of hospitalization pertaining to Aboriginal Australians discharged from public and private hospitals in New South Wales during 1978. Morbidity patterns revealed provide quantitative evidence on a whole population basis for the often impressionistic statements of those dealing with limited areas or with specific diseases.Respiratory diseases are by far the most common and their occurrence seems to be out of proportion in relation to other diagnoses. Gastrointestinal and diarrhoeal diseases are important among young children, alcoholism among men, and diabetes among older people of both sexes. The most common surgical procedures involved abdomen, female genitals and ear, nose and throat.It was noted that for most disease categories Aborigines were more likely to be hospitalized than non-Aborigines, the major exception being neoplasms. On the other hand, Aborigines were significantly less likely to be hospitalized for surgical operations. Overall, Aborigines were found to suffer higher levels of ill-health primarily due to their depressed economic conditions and social exclusion as well as racial discrimination to which they are commonly subjected in Australia.