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Let us turn now to the forces operating in the Asia-Pacific that are creating similar social and cultural patterns within the region as well as with the rest of the world. These forces are industrialization, capitalism, travel and migration, tourism, communications, and the global media. First, however, it is important to note that the societies and cultures in the Asia-Pacific have never been static. Archaeological evidence suggests, for example, that the ‘great leader syndrome’ which Europeans encountered over the last two centuries has not always been there. Perhaps it was the death of a particularly dynamic leader that caused the devolution of the system, or perhaps a disease that affected production and thus population numbers. Change is continuous and what can be observed about change since European contact is that its pace has quickened considerably.Undoubtedly the first set of influences that affected various societies was migration. Humans have been moving in this region for a very long time, making their way across Asia, conquering less advanced societies and occupying new territories. In just over 1,000 years China expanded from a small area of the northwest to occupy at least outposts in most of the area that is China today. Various peoples migrated into SouthEast Asia from south-western China and Tibet over the past 5,000 years. China itself has been invaded several times from inner Asian peoples, including the Tartars, the Mongols, and the Manchus. Chinese dominated Vietnam for much of the first millennium, spreading Buddhism and Confucianism as well as their culture and government institutions.The settlement of Australia, the islands of South-East Asia and those of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia demonstrates the ability to travel by sea, although settlements of the more distant island groups in Polynesia were almost certainly accidental rather than planned with deliberate navigation. At shorter distances, however, travel was planned and purposeful. In Melanesia, there were trading rings between many island groups, the best known in the West, thanks to the work of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, being the kula ring. This was an annual trade in which trading partners exchanged prestige goods between the various islands in the chain. Large white arm shells went in one direction and red shell necklaces in the other. Along with this trade in prestige goods there was also trade in more utilitarian goods. In the past several centuries, well after the settlement by the ‘native peoples’, came visits by Europeans, the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and English, and where they established some permanent presence, they began to effect profound changes on the native systems, establishing trading posts, colonies, and missions. Chinese also came as traders and labourers. In the past two centuries, some Europeans settled in their colonies and brought their language plus their medical, education and political systems with them. They also imported labour in some places, for example, there are sizeable Indian minority ethnic groups in Malaysia, Singapore and, especially, Fiji. The largest proportion of the population in Hawaii is of Japanese descent, with those of European descent second. Singapore is a European creation with a majority Chinese population in an area otherwise dominated by Malays. In the Pacific Islands people from the poorer islands migrated to the wealthier, such as Hawaii, or to the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Tongans are now to be found from Australia, New Zealand and Singapore in the west to Los Angeles in the east, with active communication and movements of Tongans maintaining this far-flung people as a community. Another phenomenon is tourism. Tourists from the developed world now play a very important role in the economies of the Asia-Pacific. They also impose strong pressures on the societies they visit, especially on small ones in which tourism is a particularly large component of the economy. Natives learn foreign languages and with them someversion of the outside cultures. Native traditions are repackaged—or reinvented—to explain them to or make them more appealing to the guests. The demand for prostitution has direct effects on those who participate in it and often on feelings toward the tourists, the prostitutes and the dignity of the native culture. It also has a potential effect on the health of the native population, opening it up to HIV and AIDS, as well as other diseases. Tourism also has developmental effects. Foreign exchange enters the economy and tourists bring something economists call the ‘demonstration effect’. They demonstrate a life-style and level of consumption which may be completely foreign to the host country but one which locals may regard as prestigious and desirable. This triggers spending on imported goods rather than saving which the host country needs to continue developing. Tourism skews development along paths that might not be in the country’s long-term interest. Industrialization has also revolutionized economies in unprecedented ways and the effect on people’s lives has been profound. Traditional ways of life do not reflect arbitrary choices made on the basis of abstract cultural principles but result from coping with the economic necessities of life. The traditional Chinese desire for many sons, for example, with the idea that many sons mean prosperity, was appropriate when most Chinese farmed small plots of land and when for such people having a greater supply of labour was their only hope of getting ahead. With industrialization and migration from farm to city, this is no longer true. Many children mean higher costs for the parents and perhaps less money available for education or medical care. Migration to the city changes social life in many ways. Members are separated from their kinship groups. Local ceremonial life is disrupted. Extended family households become less common, although kin networks may remain intact. The relationships between the generations and the genders change. In urban areas, people are marrying later and having fewer children than their mothers and grandmothers did. In Indonesia, formerly matrilineal groups such as the Minangkabau are tending toward bilaterality and life in the mother-father-children model nuclear family. Urban Chinese are also becoming bilateral in their kinship interaction such that for social and mutual aid purposes the wife’s kin network is becoming as important as the husband’s. In China grandparents are choosing to live on their own rather than with their sons and are reluctant to be child minders for their grandchildren, wanting their independence instead. Thus, family systems are changing, a natural thing to social scientists who see the family as a central institution in the adaptation of individuals to their social, political and economic environment, but a threat to many ordinary people who see the world as they know it—and as it should be— crumbling around them. This instigates reactions and nativistic movements. Nationhood is another homogenizing force. China, Japan, and Vietnam have had continuous, complex, centralized rule and national identity for many centuries. Many groups in East Asia have experienced centralized rule from time to time, Thailand being a contemporary example. However, other Asian nations did not assume their present shape until relatively recently. In the Pacific Islands, most peoples (Tonga and Hawaii excepted) experienced nothing like nationhood until colonialism and had no experience with selfgovernment until the last half-century. Recent nationhood has signalled extensive changes. Modern government, based on a bureaucratic model, changes the way people are or are supposed to be governed and the roles of those in government and the public service. Accompanying these developments are other changes to the economy, the education system both in how and what students are taught, and the influence of science and modern medicine on peoples. New nations also face the task of ensuring national loyalty, which means new requirements of citizenship, and in nations made up of many different peoples such as China, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Malaysia, mechanisms to unite peoples who see themselves as different from, and are often antagonistic toward, each other. Mass media can have a homogenizing effect both within a nation and, with the spread of movies, videos and satellite television, throughout the Asia-Pacific as well as the world. Imagine an Iban from Sarawak watching soap operas or music shows from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. The language is different, and the music style almost certainly reflects the majority culture, perhaps with some outside influences from Japan, China, or the USA. The life-styles of those in the soap operas are probably urban and middle class. All these factors constitute pressures on the local language, traditional culture, and life-style. Also worthy of mention are modern communication techniques such as facsimile and the world wide web. They are noteworthy because of their speed and accessibility as well as the breadth of information available. Much of what was communicated to the outside world prior to, during, and immediately after the June 4 Incident in Tiananmen Square in 1989 was via fax. The internet plays a role in opposition politics in Indonesia, as the middle-class intelligentsia maintains contact through computers. Moreover, while governments may not like the potential these technologies have for dissent and the organization of that dissent, they are extremely difficult to police short of denying access altogether, which is very problematic
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