The latest program for the 2009 Thailand Update is pasted below. The Update has been organised by the National Thai Studies Centre at the Australian National University.
New Mandala will be experimenting with some live coverage of the update using Twitter. Our Twitter account is newmandala. If you don’t already have a Twitter account create one (here) and add newmandala to the list of accounts you follow (it’s easy!).
We are hoping to have some Thai language commentary too, so please pass this message on to Thai web boards etc.
We will be using what Twitter calls a “hashtag” to categorise all Twitter posts (tweets!) related to the Update. The hashtag will be #2009thaiupdate. So you if you want to make any of your own comments, put #2009thaiupdate somewhere in the tweet (anywhere is ok) so others can easily search for all tweets relating to the Update. If you want to follow all the tweets tagged with #2009thaiupdate the simplest way is to go to http://search.twitter.com/ and just insert the tag (including the hash). I have been having a few problems with this search function and I am finding that the posts show up best if you search all languages. All language search will also be useful to pick up Thai language tweets.
Sorry if all this sounds a bit complex. It’s not difficult at all once you get the hang of it!
I look forward to some lively online discussion on Monday!
National Thai Studies Centre, ANU
Thailand Update Conference, 2009
Date: Monday 2 November 2009
Venue: Hedley Bull Theatre, Hedley Bull Centre (next to Coombs Building), ANU
Theme: Thailand in Turmoil: Crisis, Coalition and Corruption
9.00 to 9.05: Welcome: Professor Paul Hutchcroft, Director, School of International, Political and Strategic Studies, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU
9.05 to 10.15: Session 1. Chair – Professor Paul Hutchcroft
Dr Chris Baker, Bangkok – politics update
Professor Peter Warr, ANU – economics update
10.30 to 12.15: Session 2. Chair – Professor Hal Hill
Professor Pasuk Phongpaichit, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok – aspects of economic and political equity in Thailand
Mr Nicholas Farrelly, ANU – Red vs. Yellow Online: The Role of the Internet in Thailand’s Political Debates
Dr Bhanupong Nidhiprabha, Thammasat University, Bangkok – The military budget cycle, the coup, and corruption
1.15 to 3.00: Session 3. Chair – Professor Pasuk Phongpaichit
Dr Nualnoi Treerat, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok – corruption and institutions in Thailand
Dr Sirilaksana Khoman, Thammasat University, Bangkok – corruption in Thailand within an East Asian comparative perspective
Dr Ross McLeod, ANU – the economics of corruption in Indonesia: Lessons for Thailand
3.15 to 5.00: Session 4. Chair – Professor Raghabendra Jha
Dr Isra Sarntisart, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok – the role of economic deprivation in the Southern conflict
Dr Marc Askew, University of Melbourne and Prince of Songkhla University – Social and Political Origins of the Southern Conflict
Professor Des Ball and Mr Nicholas Farrelly, ANU – Thailand’s paramilitaries
5.00 to 5.05: Special presentation: Ms Saowapha Viravong – The Thai collection at the National Library of Australia
Note: Each speaker will be allocated 25 minutes, followed by 10 minutes questions and comments from the audience, which must be brief, please.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Kevin Hewison // Oct 29, 2009 at 1:11 pm
It does look like an interesting programme. I don’t have the energy to learn all this twittering stuff – I can barely keep up with my old-fashioned emails. So I was wondering if there is any chance of papers, even as notes, being posted?
2 Nick Nostitz // Oct 30, 2009 at 4:02 am
I can only support Kevin’s thoughts – call me a Luddite – but i have no idea about all that twittering stuff, no time and very little inclination to learn about it right now. The old brain has only that much space, and is already bursting with red/yellow/bue/green, and a dozen studies on my desktop i should have read by now but haven’t…
Papers posted would be appreciated very much.
3 Doug Miles // Nov 5, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Other Corruptions and Silences in the Deep South?
Dr Isra used the concept of “silence” to make the point that corruption is more things than money : eg that self-censorship has prevailed in the press regarding discrimination against Muslims in education.
And surely, such silence will ensure public ignorance about the south if journalists accredited to the Thai media are never able to speak or read Malay . But are there any contemporary Thai-reporters who have facility in that language when ing listen to and reading about the Muslims they write about for ouredification ?
There is an extraordinary legitimation among English-speaking Thai civilian and military officers as well as Thai academics and journalists of an old adage that even standard Malay is an impossible second-language for any of them to learn and none do. The adherents turn a deaf ear to hundred of millions of primary schoolchildren in Indonesia who are also from non-Indonesian speaking families but who certainly give the lie to such an intellectually self-indulgent excuse by well-paid professionals who thus guarantee to blend inadequacy in quality with distortion of the information on which the Thai public and the world depends to understand the south while voicing never ending complaints about the complexity of the region’s issues.
And has any Bangkok newspaper , business or government department ever encouraged any of its staff to learn to speak and read Malay as so many have encouraged male personnel to become novices and monks?
It may true that only two outsiders (including the ANU ’s Andrew Cornish) have ever mastered Patani Malay . But as both these linguistically gifted anthropologists say, the fact is also that its adult male speakers are also typically and proficiently bilingual in standard Malay/Indonesian and reinforces religion in binding those populations in the southern provinces to one another and to the rest of Southeast Asia’s Muslim majority. Yet are any of the etyhnic Central Thais who matter bothering to listen to what they really say or write for one another ?
New Manadala would do well to use its good name and influence at the ANU to arrange candidature for volunteering Bangkok journalists in the relevant faculty’s Elementary Indonesian / Malay examination at this university. The attraction I proposeb would be an undertaking by one of the blog’s sponsors to meet the expenses of the most successful candidate in completeing a degree with a major in the subject.
Any offers? …by Australian business ?…. b y Thai business ? by Malaysian business? Wait for the rush!
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