The 2008 Budget: Whose Pie Is It Anyway? (Third World Studies Center Policy Dialogue Series 2007)

November 19, 2007 (Monday)
2:30-4:30 p.m.
Conference Room, Balay Kalinaw
University of the Philippines
Diliman, Quezon City



In its commitment to contribute to meaningful dialogues in the search for alternatives and viable policy options, the Third World Studies Center's Policy Dialogue Series 2007 focuses on key policy issues that determine the trajectory of the 14th Philippine Congress. The series brings to fore major multisectoral policy concerns vis-a-vis the executive's and legislature's policy agenda and, more importantly, to come up with policy proposals for a more responsive new legislature.

Entitled The 2008 Budget: Whose Pie Is It Anyway?, the first installment of the three-part series In Session: Legislations in the 14th Philippine Congress will focus primarily on the question of making the process for drafting the national budget a participatory exercise. It seeks to elicit insights from various stakeholders on the following questions:

1. Does the proposed national budget meet your sector's needs for 2008?
2. Did your organization actively engage Congress in drafting the budget?

The Third World Studies Center would like to invite to the dialogue those who are willing to share their insights on these questions.

Program


2:00-2:30
Registration

2:30-2:35
Welcome Remarks
Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem
Director,Third World Studies Center
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
University of the Philippines-Diliman

2:35-2:45
Introduction of the Discussants and Format of the Dialogue

The 2008 National Budget: Whose Pie Is It Anyway?

2:45-3:00
Emilia T. Boncodin
Professor, National College of Public Administration and Governance
University of the Philippines-Diliman
and former Secretary, Department of Budget and Management

3:00-3:15
Leonor M. Briones
Professor, National College of Public Administration & Governance
University of the Philippines-Diliman
and former National Treasurer

3:15-3:30
James Miraflor
Researcher
Freedom from Debt Coalition

3:30-4:15
Open Forum

4:15-4:30
Last Comments from the Discussants and Synthesis


Moderator

Celito Arlegue
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
University of the Philippines-Diliman

China and India after Decolonization: Implications for Southeast Asia

CHINA AND INDIA AFTER DECOLONIZATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA


PRASENJIT DUARA
Professor and Chair
Department of History
University of Chicago

November 19, 2007 (Monday)
10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon
Bulwagang Sala'am
Romulo Hall
Asian Center
University of the Philippines
Diliman, Quezon City


ABSTRACT
India and China had rather different historical relations with Southeast Asia for over two millennia. Although India had played an important cultural role in Southeast Asian society, it had a small presence in recent centuries. China had been, until recently, a much more powerful political presence. As the new national movements in the two societies began to converge towards a common horizon in the early twentieth century, their subsequent national histories marched to a remarkably similar rhythm. Both also sought to exercise their leadership over the emergent nations in Asia and Africa in post-WWII period.

The initial rivalry between the two for regional leadership, which culminated in the Bandung Conference in 1955, gave way to pre-occupation with domestic issues. It was not till several decades later that a renascent China was able to have a major influence in Southeast Asia. It is only recently that India has also turned its attention to the Asia Pacific region.

The paper tries to tell the story of what happened in the intervening years in the relations between the two over the issue of Asian leadership. It outlines how the Chinese leadership was effective in actually utilizing a Westphalian-type, Panchasheela model of international relations to further its interests among its neighbors, while also being able to confine India to South Asia. Improvement in the relations between the two nation-states in recent years and the concomitant growth in the status of India in Asia has led to considerable economic and political opportunities for Southeast states and people.

PROGRAM

09:30-10:00
Registration

10:00-10:05
Welcome Remarks
Aileen S.P. Baviera
Dean
Asian Center
University of the Philippines-Diliman

10:05-10:10
Introduction of the Speaker
Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem
Director
Third World Studies Center
College of Social Science and Philosophy
University of the Philippines-Diliman

10:10-11:10
China and India after Decolonization:
Implications for Southeast Asia
Prasenjit Duara
Professor and Chair
Department of History
University of Chicago

11:10-11:50
Open Forum

11:50-12:00
Last Comments from the Lecturer



Moderator
Eduardo Gonzalez
Professor
Asian Center
University of the Philippines-Diliman

Of Miracles and Middle Forces: The Social Construction of Middle-Class Consciousness in the Philippines, 1970s-2000 (A Roundtable Discussion)

CELSO M. VILLEGAS
PhD Candidate, Brown University, USA and
Visiting Research Fellow, Third World Studies Center

25 October 2007
10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon
Third World Studies Center
Lower Ground Floor Palma Hall
University of the Philippines-Diliman


ABSTRACT
This talk presents an alternative perspective on middle-class formation in the Philippines, focusing on the social construction of public narratives that relate the history and destiny of the "middle class" to democracy. It will elaborate how and why Filipino scholars, pundits, and ordinary citizens alike understood the major shifts in democratic governance in the past thirty years -- Martial Law, EDSA I, and EDSA II -- as being the products of "the middle class"; and how the cumulative processes of discursive adaptation, social distinction, and political struggle resulted and reinforced a pervasive concept of middle-classness built on interrelated notions of "values", a dialectical tension with consumer culture, and a vision of the class as a maker of modernity. To illustrate this, the talk will present an analysis of explicit references to the "middle class" in the print and digital media, in political statements, and in social science discourse.

_______________________________
Celso M. Villegas is a PhD candidate from the Department of Sociology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA and Visiting Research Fellow at the Third World Studies Center. He is conducting fieldwork for a comparative study of middle-class formation in the Philippines, Ecuador, and Venezuela. He is the co-author (with James Mahoney) of "Historical Enquiry in Comparative Politics," recently published in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics (Oxford University Press).

Development and Security in Southeast Asia, vol. 1-The Environment (A Kasarinlan Review)

David B. Dewitt and Carolina G. Hernandez, eds. The Environment. Vol. 1 of Development and Security in Southeast Asia. England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. 269 pp.


First published in Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies 19, 1 (2004): 209-215.

After reading the volume on the environment of the three-tome Development and Security in Southeast Asia (DSSEA), and chapter after chapter of policy recommendations, one starts to wonder whether these recommendations are for real or just snake oil slathered on the pages of this book.

DSSEA claims that it “has at its core the question of the relationship between government and civil society in their efforts to define and to pursue security, broadly defined” (3). This three-volume work also “posits a tension between how government and its instruments understand and pursue security and how people and the communities that they comprise understand and seek their own particular security interests” (3).

For this volume on the environment “each of the chapters examines the environment, development, and security linkages…These include the overlap of human security and development, the environmental crisis as ‘slow-motion’ security threat, the differing perceptions of such ‘slow-motion’ threats, and the different uses of the environment and security linkage by different actors” (21). Eight case studies focusing on Indonesia and the Philippines with the Southeast Asia as the broader context comprise this volume. These case studies deal with the following topics: hazardous waste and human security in Southeast Asia, state responses to environmental insecurity in Southeast Asian forests, a Philippine community’s perspective on development and (in)security, human and ecological security in the context of mining disputes in the Philippines, food production and environmental security in Indonesia, state capacity and industrial pollution in the Philippines, the textile industry in Indonesia, and climate change and security. Besides probing the environment, development and security linkages, these case studies were also meant to address DSSEA’s two other goals. One of which is “developing enhanced theoretical and conceptual understanding of these complex linkages to further our knowledge and to improve our abilities to develop practical instruments in support of improved human well being [sic]” (3). The other one is to use this “acquired knowledge and information for empowerment and change” (3).

In sum, the book argues this: have enough social capital, enhance the state’s capacity to deal with environmental problems that threaten it and endanger human security, aim for sustainable development, then everything will be all right with the world. How tenable is this proposition?
Much of the weakness of this book is a result of its uncritical deployment of particular concepts like sustainable development, social capital, and human security. The Brundtland Commission’s articulation of sustainable development and Robert Putnam’s definition of social capital were repeatedly quoted in the book’s different chapters as if they were part of a papal encyclical that should be uttered, obeyed, and never questioned by the faithful. These instances raise serious doubt on DSSEA’s goal of coming up with an enhanced theoretical and conceptual understanding involving the environment-security-development nexus.

In the introductory chapter it is stated that for “the DSSEA program, development makes sense only when understood in terms of sustainable development, a comprehensive concept with ecological, economic, social, and political dimensions” (10). And precisely what is sustainable development? To answer this, the book falls back to the original Brundtland Commission formulation: “a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, direction of investments, orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, 9). Then the book tried to improve on this definition by saying that sustainable development “encompasses the creation of domestic and inter-state institutions that have the specialized knowledge and skills to regulate, to manage, and to facilitate stable political pluralism, economic development, and social equity” (7). It added that “unsustainable and mismanaged economic activities which degrade the environment, aggravate human relations, and exacerbate intra-state as well as inter-state relations can lead to social upheaval, challenging the security of the individual, of the community, of the country, and potentially the region” (8). Superficially, this makes perfect sense; it is as convincing as a glib slogan. And there lies the problem, for as one author asserts: “The Brundtland definition is not really a definition; it is a slogan, and slogan, however pretty, do not make theory” (Banerjee 2003, 151-152).

The sustainable development articulated by DSSEA and subscribed into by the various case studies is part of the current discourses of sustainable development which “despite highlighting issues of poverty and equity… do not criticize the structural conditions that characterize the increasing intrusion of capital into the domain of nature, which results in the capitalization, expropriation, commodification, and homogenization of nature” (Banerjee 2003, 160). In its policy recommendations, the most that this volume has done concerning the issue of capital is to say that “there is a need to recognize the environmental and security implications of global economic linkages” (29). After recognizing it, what now? The volume did not explore this issue. How different indeed is sustainable development from plain development? The volume did not even pose this question. It simply said that “the model of development on which rapid economic expansion of SEA has been articulated is not sustainable because it involves dynamics of social and political inequality bound to cause its demise over the long term” (4). It failed to provide any powerful critique of sustainable development. Its silence validates this critical assessment of this particular concept:

The main shortcoming of the mainstream approach to sustainable development is that it is driven by the rapid accumulation requirements of the capitalist economy, which means that it is about sustaining development rather than developing sustainability in the ecological sense. The priority is to ensure that environmental conditions are managed so as to ensure maximum long-term capital accumulation (which necessitates rapid economic growth). In this respect, neoclassical environmental economics gravitates toward a weak sustainability hypothesis at best. Here it is assumed that in most cases, human-made capital can substitute for natural capital, so that in all but few cases, there are no real limitations to expansion imposed by the environment. Market mechanisms can be adjusted to ensure that environmental factors are taken account of, with no real alteration in the fundamental character of the capitalist economy. (Castro 2004, 220)

Social capital was another concept used in this book that was not critically engaged. The concept of social capital runs throughout all the specific projects pursued within this research program (3). Yet nothing was done besides quoting Robert Putnam’s definition of social capital and its slight variations from other authors. In this volume, social capital is defined as “a type of social connectedness that facilitates the development of trust, cooperation, identifications, and norms of interaction, which in turn are crucial for decisive action—such as promoting economic growth or managing environmental resources” (63). Again, nothing seems to be wrong with this—not until one starts to question social capital’s basic assumptions and the implications of its usage in policy formulation.

Here is an incisive critique of social capital:

Whether it concerns a social or a spatial category, in some applications of social capital there is a tendency towards blaming the victim. Individuals, neighbourhoods, villages, regions, countries are underdeveloped because supposedly they do not have the ‘right’ kind of social capital.…The victim-blaming approach also has to do with neoliberal triumphalism. The West/North was right after all, wasn’t it? Modernity did bring the right kind of social capital and trust, didn’t it? But what about path-dependence then? Following social capital’s own logic, wouldn’t path-dependence point to a responsibility of the former colonial powers for the plight of the Third World? Well, not necessarily, as one might go back way before the beginning of colonialism towards the ‘real’ traditional cultural roots which have survived (resisted) the colonial impacts [sic] and are the real culprits for the present stagnation. Following this line of reasoning colonialism and imperialism are relegated to the sideline in explaining the current plight of the Third World in exchange for a path-dependent explanation which goes back to the precolonial times. (Schuurman 2003, 1000)

This limitation definitely showed in the case studies. The chapter that dealt with hazardous waste and human security in Southeast Asia was mum on the toxic legacy of American military bases in the Philippines. Except for the chapter on mining, all the other case studies just gave a wink and a nod to the colonial and neocolonial context of ecological degradation in the region. This is of course perfectly in line with the DSSEA’s thrust: to strengthen social capital in order to stave off any environmental crisis in the region which could imperil sustainable development. Why blame the colonial masters for the current mess when it is easy to heap all the responsibility on the poor, undisciplined native?

More perceptive and critical authors have also raised the issue that the stress on social capital is linked to the neoliberal’s continuing attempt to emasculate the state (Fernando 2003, Schuurman 2003). The book did not bother with this issue as made evident by two of its policy recommendations. One policy recommendation reads: “State capacity needs to be enhanced to deal with environmental threats to human security” (28). The next one states: “Support for NGO and community activities needs to be enhanced” (28). Is there a contradiction in this? The current dominant discourse on sustainable development also affects how social capital will be deployed. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), an integral part of civil society—“an arena that both reflects and shapes social capital” (63)—is now being viewed in a different light:

The current positioning of NGOs in sustainable development coincides with the withdrawal of the state from its conventional role in social development and its replacement by the private sector. It was widely believed that the NGOs were capable of effectively responding to the weaknesses of the state and the private sector. Contrary to expectations, investments by NGOs have by no means compensated for what society has lost due to the withdrawal of the state from social development, nor have they shielded social development from the negative consequences of private sector-led development. Instead, NGOs have evolved as institutions that discipline social order to function according to the dictates of neoliberal institutions. In this process, NGO activities have contributed toward the decapitation of the state in areas where it has historically performed well, particularly for the marginalized segments of the population. (Fernando 2003, 18)

The book espouses the view that in strengthening the social capital the state will also be strengthened. This is a perspective that did not factor-in capitalism’s and neoliberalism’s uncanny ability to hold hostage both the state and the social capital. As mentioned above, the ploy to strengthen social capital can be linked to efforts to weaken the state. Hence, “the challenge is not to abandon the state as irrelevant but to liberate its power from being determined by the dictates of capital” (Fernando 2003, 23). For if capital remains supreme, “sustainable development [will be] managed in the same way development was managed: through ethnocentric, capitalist notions of managerial efficiency that simply reproduce earlier articulations of decentralized capitalism in the guise of ‘sustainable capitalism’” (Banerjee 2003, 173). However, how do you exactly liberate the state from the clutches of capital in order to save the environment and give human security to the people? Again, the book never bothered with such a question.

Consistent with the book’s stance not to interrogate a concept when it can pass it off as something new, this book brandished human security the same way it does with sustainable development and social capital—uncritically. In this book, human security is defined as “human well being [sic] and the attainment of basic needs such as access to sustainable livelihoods, health, food, shelter, and human rights” (34). Human security, the book qualifies, “overlaps significantly with current popular broader definition of ‘human development’” (34). To demonstrate this overlap, the same phrase used to define human security was used to mean human development (21). Such is not a case of overlap but of interchangeability. If one concept can stand for another, why bother to use the two of them?

However, more important than the question of using the precise term is the question of how human security was put into use in delineating the breadth and depth of the book’s arguments and recommendations. As mentioned before, in its list of overall policy recommendations, the book calls for enhancing the state’s capacity to deal with environmental threats to human security. But in its definition it says that human security is concerned with the human well-being and its attainment of basic needs; therefore, human security is not just for particular subjects of certain states, it is for all. If the state will remain the main actor in providing human security, then the state will be ensuring only the human security of the people within its borders even with the “pressure and participation from the global community and local communities” (28). To say that human security can still be achieved if only the states will simultaneously pursue human security is to go beyond what can be realistically expected.

The book has clearly shown that environmental threats transcend national boundaries as in the case of global climate change, thus it follows that cooperation at transnational and international levels is needed. Human security calls for “reconceptualizing the nature of international co-operation” (Ney 1999, 20). Did the book tackle this crucial issue? It did not. If human security in the context of environmental threats will simply be dependent on the state, should it even be called human security?

By not thoroughly working on the assumptions that underpin the concepts used in framing the study, the book ended up with incoherent policy recommendations. The conceptual tools used by the book ended up blunt and conventional thus reducing any sense of novelty that could be had from the case studies. And by being blunt and conventional, this volume managed only to scratch the surface of a highly complex issue.—Joel F. Ariate Jr., University Research Associate, Third World Studies Center.


References
Banerjee, Subhabrata Bobby. 2003. Who sustains whose development? Sustainable development and the reinvention of nature. Organization Studies 24 (2): 143-180.

Castro, Carlos. 2004. Sustainable development: Mainstream and critical perspectives. Organization and Environment 17 (2): 195-225.

Fernando, Jude. 2003. The power of unsustainable development: What is to be done? Annals of the American Academy of Political Science 590: 6-34.

Ney, Steven. 1999. Environmental security: a critical overview. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 12 (1): 7-30.

Schuurman, Fran. 2003. Social capital: The politico-emancipatory potential of a disputed concept. Third World Quarterly 24 (6): 991-1010.

World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our common future. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Development and Security in Southeast Asia, vol. 2-The People (A Kasarinlan Review)

David B. Dewitt and Carolina G. Hernandez, eds. The People. Vol. 2 of Development and Security in Southeast Asia. England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. 248 pp.

First published in Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies 19, 1 (2004): 216-221.

With the Cold War over, contemporary Southeast Asia is now beset with new anxieties generated by its shifting development and security concerns. After the 1997 economic crisis, the governments and populations of the region became united in “rethinking” what should constitute economic progress in a “redefined” stable environment. The main challenge that Southeast Asia confronts and needs to overcome is the trade-off between development and security and the (mis)handling of progress vis-à-vis sustainability.

The same concern is advanced by the book, Development and Security in Southeast Asia. Unified by its fundamental shift in development thinking and security approach, this three-volume book examines how state-society relations is affected by and entwined in the complex security-development nexus. The research rests on the assumption that there is a gap between how the governments and societies in the region perceive, understand and obtain security. Given this gap, it is a comprehensive attempt to reconcile such disparity by fostering awareness on the experiences of Southeast Asian communities. The book engages governments and nongovernmental agencies to consider issues such as social equity, people empowerment and environmental conservation and regeneration as essential parts of any development project. The book’s six case studies in four Southeast Asian countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand—intend to capture the complex linkage between development and security in terms of a wide gamut of issues such as migration, ethnicity, gender and employment. Brief, critical summaries of these studies conclude each chapter.

The strands of uncertainty and insecurity attached to the development in Southeast Asia have positioned the issue of migration at the forefront. The people’s search for an enhanced well-being and their dissatisfaction with their worsening quality of life has caused transnational and extraregional movements. Foremost of these is the increasing recurrence of labor inflow and outflow toward and beyond national borders that are oftentimes illicit in nature. This widespread phenomenon, along with its relation to the development-security linkage, is comprehensively analyzed by Jorge Tigno in his research on “Migration, Security and Development: The Politics of Undocumented Labor Migration in Southeast Asia.” The study is limited to the transborder mobility of migrants in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. It focuses on the issues surrounding the clandestine migratory movements of low-skilled labor in the said areas of the region such as its “constructed” contribution to economic decay, social instability and insecurity of host countries. In discussing at length illegal recruitment as a factor to both undocumented labor migration and the problem of identity, state resistance and policy restrictions against foreign workforce, and the existence, significance and expansion of social networks ensuing from migration, the study then is an extensive attempt to identify the causes of extra-legal immigration of workers. It also explains the discrepancy between state-society discernment of this phenomenon.

On the other hand, while it entails a viable framework for understanding the plight of overseas employees in the countries mentioned, the analysis is concentrated on their “perceived” impact on the development and security only of receiving countries. The research should have included an extensive discussion on the effects of labor flight on the sending countries themselves. With Southeast Asia as one of the main exporters of clandestine workers, it is therefore also significant to trace and indicate what the source governments do and should do to secure the well-being of their overseas nationals and how this human resource flight threatens their own socioeconomic progress and security. Nevertheless, this paper provides well-built arguments in characterizing the state’s role in the persisting social stereotypes of foreign migrants and their activities, as well as in proposing what initiatives it should take with the help of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in changing these perceptions and redefining its own policies. Above all, this sets off the initial stage from which to study further the links between transborder flow of low-skilled labor, security and development in both national and regional levels and in political, economic, social and even cultural terms.

Ruth Lusterio’s research, “Perceptions of Women Migrant Workers from the Philippines and Indonesia,” highlights the role of women as an active party to the dynamics of security and development. It rests upon the assumption that the feminization of overseas employment bears serious implications on both the individual and national levels of security. Tracing the factors that push women to seek job opportunities abroad, the study emphasizes how this increasing phenomenon is, itself, a security issue brought about by the search for other venues that could cater to a more developed and enhanced well-being. In contrast to the previous case study, migration here is analyzed as an “internal” security concern, largely affecting the source or sending countries themselves. Its findings suggest that while women employment abroad is both a source of foreign exchange and a remedy to domestic unemployment, it also causes a great deal of personal, socioeconomic and even psychological insecurities that cannot be ignored in any pursuit of sustainable development. This reflects the two-sided response of both the Filipino and Indonesian female workers themselves, arguing that their occupations overseas have both negative and positive effects. In addition, the research suggests policy options in seeking long-term solutions to this ironic trend, reaching out to various sectors, especially the government. With all the empirical data presented, the study is a meticulous attempt to understand the concerns of female migrant workers and to identify how their problems can be resolved through collaboration between and among official agencies, NGOs and the private sector. This case study has particular relevance to the fate of many women overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), especially the domestic helpers and entertainers whose myriad of problems remain unattended or unresolved.

The impact of economic crisis, along with political instability and social turmoil, on the workers’ security in Indonesia is analyzed in the chapter “Security Implications of the Economic Crisis for Indonesian Workers” by Tubagus Feridhanusetyawan. The study focuses on how the labor sector had been largely affected by the drastic and painful changes in the Indonesian economy and polity, with the adjustments in employment trend and income levels as the main parameters for measuring security. In attempting to identify the security implications of the economic drought in 1997, its effects on workers are examined from both micro- and macroperspectives at the aggregate and individual levels. The strength of this paper lies in this dual approach, where its clearly constructed conceptual framework effectively explains the direct outcomes of the economic crisis in the national economy and individual households as well as its implications on the macro- and microlevels of security in the country. The author likewise discusses other issues such as the decline in employment rate, the absence or ineffectiveness of social programs as safety nets for laborers, the intensifying migration and labor flight, the worsening poverty, the reverse transformation of the labor market, and the food crisis, which are altogether understood as end-products of the economic downturn and as additional sources of national insecurity. At the individual level, on the other hand, workers’ insecurity is said to be derived from the instability of employment status and the drastic reduction in wages and income thus weakening their purchasing power. Through the survey data, the findings of the study suggest that the actual effect of the crisis is in the decline of the workers’ real income, which thus necessitates a rethinking in policy orientation. The primary recommendation is for governments to embark on employment creation programs by encouraging the booming sectors to expand their hiring and to provide income support packages as safety nets through the help of NGOs.

That industrialization is part and parcel of development and the modernization process is indubitable. However, it is not without side effects that governments should push for it devoid of caution. The negative externalities of industrialization, as manifested in the labor sector of Indonesia are discussed in Muhammad Hikam’s “Industrialization and Workers’ Security: A Political Perspective.” The paper examines the local workers’ labor and living conditions under the New Order regime in Indonesia, which spearheaded the rapid growth of the country’s industrial sectors. Presenting the gap between the actual situation of workers and the aggregate economic development, it questions the nature of labor policies implemented by the said regime in nurturing and further enhancing the security of the workers. It posits that the insecurity of the work force is, in fact, derived from the labor laws and government provisions themselves that perpetuate the abysmal living conditions of the workers. Examples cited are the wage policy and labor union laws that have negative implications not only on the workers’ socioeconomic status but also on their basic human rights. The research findings suggest that the apparent success in the modernization of Indonesia sacrificed the security of the labor sector, not only because of the adoption of an inappropriate model for development as enshrined in the New Order’s labor laws and regulations but also due to the wrong perceptions of labor relations and priorities. This chapter actually intends to target both the present and future administrations of Indonesia to consider a new approach to industrialization and empower its rather inactive civil society. Furthermore, it urges the workers to establish strong links with other sectors in the society not only to advance their cause but also to help transform the country’s politics into a more citizen-based undertaking.

The chapter “Stockbrokers-turned-Sandwich Vendors: The Economic Crisis and Small-Scale Food Retailing in Thailand and the Philippines” by Gisèle Yasmeen presents another example of the oftentimes contradictory relationship between development and security. It highlights the increasing emergence of microenterprises in the region as one response to financial insecurity in a period of considerable economic development. It illustrates the growing employment trend in Thailand and the Philippines, where people engage in various income-generating activities. Focusing on small-scale food retailing, the study reveals that despite the rapid growth in the region from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, many firms had laid off workers, who in turn put up their own eateries and vending operations to earn small amount of profit on a daily basis. The growth of self-employment in Southeast Asia’s food sector is thus attributed to the mounting need for income security. In addition, the author gives attention to the high levels of women participation in microeconomic activities and the impact of industrialization on female self-employment. The last section of the case study points to policy alternatives that should be considered in recognizing and safeguarding the rights of those in the informal sector, especially women vendors and displaced workers, with the premise that such segment of the economy is not only an important source of livelihood but also fosters network building in the form of food cooperatives and microentrepreneur organizations, giving voice to the larger vulnerable work groups.

Conflict alleviation, being another core component of the development-security nexus, constitutes the main theme of Jacques Bertrand’s “‘Good’ Governance and the Security of Ethnic Communities in Indonesia and the Philippines.” He starts off by establishing the significance of conflict resolution and peace-building in any long-term development and security objective of a given society. Looking at conflict in the level of ethnicity, the author examines the relationship between political systems and the level of security they can guarantee to ethnic communities. With a focus on the religious dimension, the paper covers only Indonesian and Philippine experiences in Muslim-Christian enmity. The author is to be commended for his intelligent selection of these two cases because aside from the fact that both countries’ populations are divided into Muslim and Christian blocks and that both suffer from the discordant interaction of the two groups, Indonesia and the Philippines differ in their government types, which therefore gives a clear illustration of his main thesis about the sufficiency of “good governance” in responding to community threats brought about by ethnic strife and religious rivalries. In addition, arguing that improvement in governance and democratization per se do not necessarily address hostilities originating from cultural, racial or religious diversity and hence the insecurity of communities, the paper offers an alternative approach in resolving ethnic tensions.

With the six case studies, this book stands out as a comprehensive survey on the nontraditional security challenges encountered by both Southeast Asian governments and societies. The research emphasizes the need for a strong and effective partnership between the people and the government in fostering a stable, secured and economically fit environment. However, the study seems to discount the youth as a major actor in the present security-development drama. The youth comprise a significant portion of the region’s population and are part of the most vulnerable sectors in society. They are major contributors to development since young people nowadays, especially in Southeast Asia, are already engaged in small-scale enterprises, usually as vendors or dealers if not as undocumented migrants or victims of illegal recruitment. Also, the youth are the most affected by the mismanaged and inadequate development and security measures of governments since it is their generation that will have to endure and suffer from these unhealthy policies. Nevertheless, serving as a bridge to further similar academic undertakings, there is no doubt that this book extends a sense of optimism and confidence that the region can surpass these new exigent realities with the right combination of development strategies and security goals.—Sarah Jane Domingo, Master in Asian Studies student, Asian Center, University of the Philippines-Diliman.