Beyond the state? The moral turn of development in South East Asia

Abstract

On 28 September 2018, an earthquake and tsunami hit West Sulawesi, destroying homes, mosques and livelihoods, displacing 80,000 people and killing at least 2000. Immediately, thousands of volunteers mobilized to offer rescue and relief by providing food, organizing shelter and raising money and relief items through social networks and social media (Morse 2018b). These immediate, spontaneous and localized relief efforts preceded, complemented and partly substituted the more bureaucratic and coordinated response of local authorities (Morse 2018a), as well as interventions by specialized international organizations and large NGOs. While the Indonesian government at first declined international aid on the grounds that it could manage the disaster on its own, it accepted offers of relief assistance after the scale of the destruction became evidentalbeit selectively and strictly regulating the nature of operations, provision of necessities and deployment of foreign personnel (ABC News 2018; Latiff and Kapoor 2018; Loy 2018a). Obviously, as Christina Bennett, an international aid policy analyst, notes, 'gone are the days when you're going to have a humanitarian sector that comes into a disaster situation with a very heavy footprint and sets up as almost an auxiliary, or a replacement of government services' (quoted in Loy 2018b).While there has been speculation about the politics of Indonesia's insistence on being able to help its own citizens, its response actually fits well within a broader trend towards the localization of aid, and the increasing prominence of new actors in the quest to provide relief to, and improve the lives of, people in need (e.g. Charter4Change 2018; Fejerskov, Lundsgaarde, and Cold-Ravnkilde 2017). In the context of the so-called afterlives of development (Rudnyckyj and Schwittay 2014), attempts to provide relief in times of disaster and to better the lives of (marginal) populations are now increasingly relocated to initiatives beyond the state and beyond the 'traditional' development expertise of established international organizations. This special issue focuses on the new assemblage of humanitarian and development actors in South East Asia. It analyses how social entrepreneurs, diaspora groups, religious charities, local self-help groups and private investors are involved in initiatives aimed at overcoming poverty, modernizing infrastructure, providing housing, expanding knowledge, organizing emergency relief and addressing social needs. Our contributions focus on the moral politics behind these on-the-ground assemblages of actors and practices. We ask, which tools, technologies and operative logics do these development actors employ? What are their goals and motivations? What claims do they make? How do their interventions play out in local life

Guest Editors’ Introduction

“…Its product is a self-choosing subject governable by the state (see also High 2014;Schwenkel and Leshkowich 2012). Our analyses, however, suggest the emergence of an ethical citizen as the subject of governance (Derks and Nguyen 2020), which reactivates collectivist ideas of social life through the idiom of care. As both a moral discourse and a social value (Nguyen, Zavoretti, and Tronto 2017), care seems well suited to the work of linking personally with collectively oriented actions, both of which are foregrounded by late-socialist citizens.…”

“…One might see in these the rise of Herbert Marcuse's (1964) one-dimensional man, the tamed subject of techno-capitalism who finds its soul and identity in consumer objects and lifestyle, bereft of any capacity for critical reflection and transformative action. Yet late-socialist subjects' desire for comfort and pleasure, we argue, is connected to broader aspirations to modernity, progress, and development in contexts where people had long felt that they were lagging behind in the global world (Derks and Nguyen 2020;Harms 2016). Endres suggests that electrical appliances carry major implications for gendered notions of the good life that are inseparable from the meaning of electricity as liberating society from labor, darkness, and backwardness.…”

An ontological struggle: Islamic political theology and the criminalization of same‐sex sexuality in Indonesia

“…Specifically in the Indonesian context, it might seem unremarkable to argue that AILA‐GIB's legal petition signifies the presence and proliferation of conservative Islamic movements in Indonesia. Nonetheless, I think that arguing that Indonesia is experiencing a moral turn (Davies, 2020; Derks & Nguyen, 2020), an illiberal turn (Diprose et al., 2019; Bourchier, 2014), and an Islamic turn (Millie, 2018; Liddle 1996) is not enough to explain and understand AILA‐GIB's petition to criminalize sexuality. Instead, I argue that it is imperative to attend to what AILA's and GIB activists say and argue in the legal process and to their broader political agendas observed through their own languages and vernaculars.…”

Rural Life in Late Socialism: Politics of Development and Imaginaries of the Future

“…Through recognising their achievements as an exemplar of local development, however, the state is presenting itself as the patron of such development and thereby attempting to reassert its control over the ethnic minorities in the face of alternative powers such as Evangelical churches. This indeed plays into a more general policy orientation in which the state recasts its role as the supervisor and enabler of development, leaving the actual responsibilities to a broad range of social actors, including transnational actors (Derks and Nguyen 2020). In a related discussion on communities that stay and move in the face of government resettlement programmes, Sprenger shows the elusive appearance of the state.…”