Leeds East Asia Papers (LEAP) is a working papers series produced by staff, postgraduate research students and associates of the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds as well as visiting researchers and some who have presented seminar papers in the Department. The papers reflect our wide range of research interests, covering East and South East Asia, and areas of interest from the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
After a quiet period from 2005, the series is relaunched in 2010 with the publication of Victor T. King and Michael J. G. Parnwell’s paper (New Series No. 1) derived from their British Academy-funded research on the management of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Thailand ‘UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Thailand: A Comparative and Critical Appraisal’. Further papers are under preparation and will be posted to the site once completed.
For a list of previous titles and those papers that are available, visit the 1991 - 2005 Series page. |
posted 29 Jan 2012 05:10 by Admins (Jenni Rauch)
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updated 29 Jan 2012 05:18
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Abstract: The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Melaka within the ‘Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca’ together with George Town in Penang is arguably the most important national historical site in the Federation of Malaysia. As the origin of the Malay-Muslim sultanate system in Peninsular Malaysia and more widely it has been a crucial element in the Malaysian government’s nation-building policies since independence. It symbolizes a ‘golden age’ in the development of Malay civilization and in that regard the emphasis on Malay and Islamic culture in the construction of a national identity has played an important part in the ways in which Melaka has been represented and developed as a heritage site. However, the post-independence preoccupation with the necessity for economic growth and modernization has generated a tension between the protection and conservation of national heritage and the need to transform urban landscapes to realize modernity and profit, which in turn generates additional pressures on these sites. This tension presents particular difficulties for those bodies responsible for the management of a UNESCO-inscribed site in regard to the multi-vocal character of heritage discourse and the conflicting political, economic, social and cultural pressures on global heritage. |
posted 29 Mar 2011 01:51 by Web Admins (Ben Caesar)
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updated 29 Mar 2011 01:55
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Leeds East Asia Papers: New Series No.3 Open a full e-text of this paper [PDF format - 391K] For those of us who have spent our academic career in a multidisciplinary area studies programme the issue of defining and delimiting a region takes on added significance, although some of us more than others seem to be constantly exercised in pondering whether or not our region makes any conceptual, analytical or substantive sense (see King, 2005, 2006). What I want to do in this paper is firstly to trace the origins of the making of Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom (with some reference to continental European activities) and what both promoted and stood in the way of this realisation, to indicate the main moments and persons in this process of construction and then to consider the contribution that some British scholars have made to the field of studies. What is very clear is that having eventually identified Southeast Asia as a region which deserved at least some coordinated and focused attention, the British government and its agencies had neither a clear idea how best to fund the study of it and at what level, nor a consistent and sustained national policy of support and monitoring. Yet in the first two decades after the Second World War, British strategic and commercial interests in Southeast Asia were substantial: in the port city of Singapore and its military facilities, in the vitally important rubber and tin production of the Malay States and in the oil reserves of Brunei. Not only were these matters of vital concern to Britain, but the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, which at the high point of European imperialism in the nineteenth century had been turned into ‘a British lake’, also provided the British with their gateway to Hong Kong and East Asia. |
posted 29 Mar 2011 01:50 by Web Admins (Ben Caesar)
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updated 29 Mar 2011 01:55
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Leeds East Asia Papers: New Series No.2 Open a full e-text of this paper [PDF format - 1393K] This paper contributes to a growing body of research on the social protection for rural-urban migrants in Chinese cities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Beijing and Tianjin and applying an analytical framework of livelihood studies, it examines an important aspect of migrants’ social protection, namely migrants’ health, in particular workplace safety and occupational health. It aims at (1) delineating the current state of affairs in respect of social protection for rural migrants; (2) identifying the risks and threats to migrants’ health as perceived by the actors involved; (3) examining the extent to which the social rights of rural migrants are recognized, and the struggles that migrants have fought for securing livelihood and realising such rights; and (4) assessing the central and local government responses to the challenges posed for mobile livelihoods and suggesting possible ways forward. |
posted 15 May 2010 01:50 by Web Admins (Ben Caesar)
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updated 12 Oct 2010 04:31 by Admins (Jenni Rauch)
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Leeds East Asia Papers: New Series No.1
Open a full e-text of this paper [PDF format - 4201K]
This provisional and critical analysis of three UNESCO designated sites in Thailand is part of a wider cross-national, multidisciplinary comparative programme of research on selected World Heritage Sites across the Southeast Asian region (specifically in Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). The research examines the tensions that exist between the often competing interests, understandings and agendas of the various stakeholders involved in these globally important sites: local communities, national governments and their provincial and local agencies, international conservation organisations (including UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] and ICOMOS [International Council of Monuments and Sites]), tourists (both domestic and international) and civil society institutions. The project also has a policy and practical dimension in that it seeks to determine whether or not these competing tensions and pressures are being or can be resolved, and what policy options work best in certain given circumstances. International organisations like UNESCO impose a set of conservation and protection requirements on the sites which are designated on the World Heritage List. These requirements derive from the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage and may not always sit easily with national government interest in for example increasing their revenue from tourism and therefore promoting these sites in the international market-place, and in deploying them as centres for the construction and promotion of national identity and in placing them in a national historical context. |
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