Winter Workshop:
Soft Power and Spheres of Influence in South and Southeast Asia
Program draft
January 12-14, 2006
Location: National University of Singapore,
Arts Building 7 (AS7) | Seminar Rooms A, B & C
Thursday, January 12th
Morning and mid-day open for interviews and meetings for those visiting Singapore
2:30pm Shuttle bus from Orchard Parade hotel to NUS
3pm Welcome Tea
3:30pm Welcome and Opening Remarks
Peter Reeves, Joseph Turow, Alyssa Ayres
4pm-6pm 1. Kickoff Session | Media Across Borders: Theory and Practice
4-4:20 Joseph Turow, Annenberg School for Communication
“Media Storytelling, Marketing, and Soft Influence”
4:20-4:40 Durreen Shahnaz, managing director, Shahnaz Media Consulting
“Marketing Media across South and Southeast Asia”
4:40-5:40 Discussion
6pm Shuttle bus back to Orchard Parade hotel
7pm Dinner--tbd
Friday, January 13th
8:30am Shuttle bus from Orchard Parade hotel to NUS
9am-11am 2. Branding Across Regions
9-9:20 Faizal bin Yahya, National University of Singapore
“Brand India and South East Asia”
9:20-9:40 Jatin Atre, Annenberg School for Communication
“Neighbor’s Envy, Owner’s Pride: Impact of Changing
Commodities to Brands in Southeast Asia”
9:40-10:40 Discussion
10:40 Tea break
11am-12:30pm 3. New Media, New Spheres of Influences?
11-11:20 Ariel Heryanto, University of Melbourne
“New Media and Pop Cultures In(ter) Asia”
11:20-11:40 Alyssa Ayres, University of Pennsylvania
“Changing Spheres of Influence in Asia”
11:40-12:30 Discussion
12:30-1:30pm Lunch
1:30-2:45pm 4. The Soft Power of Development, Governance and Migration
1:30-1:50 Rahul Mukherji, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Institute for South Asian Studies,
National University of Singapore
“Global Economic Integration in a Plural Polity: An Asian Model with a Difference”
1:50-2:10 Arunajeet Kaur, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
“The Role of the Migrating Indian Professional in Re-Imaging India”
2:10-2:45 Discussion
2:45-3:00pm Tea break
3:00-4:30pm 5. The Digital Divide and Developmental Issues in South and Southeast Asia
3:00-3:20 Jayan Jose Thomas and Milagros Rivera, National University of Singapore
“Informational Requirements of Rural Populations”
3:20-3:50 T.T. Sreekumar, National University of Singapore
“Global Civil Society and Cyber-libertarian Developmentalism”
3:50-4:30 Discussion
4:30pm Shuttle bus back to Orchard Parade hotel
7pm Dinner—tbd.
Saturday, January 14th
8:30am Shuttle bus from Orchard Parade hotel to NUS
9am-10:40am 6. Cinema’s Power Across Borders
9-9:30 Gyanesh Kudaisya, National University of Singapore
“Celluloid Across the Barbed Fence” (+ clips)
9:30-10 Sathiavathi Chinniah, National University of Singapore
“The Soft Power of Tamil Cinema” (+clips)
10-10:45 Discussion
10:45 Tea break
11-11:45am 7. Virtual Session and Wrap-Up
11-11:20 Monroe E. Price, Director, Project for Global Communication Studies
Annenberg School of Communication
11:20-11:45 Closing discussion
Peter Reeves, South Asian Studies Programme, NUS
“Reflections on the Conference”
12-2pm 8. Final lunch with keynote address by Amb. Kishore Mahbubani
12-12:05pm A few words about South Asian Studies and research at the
National University of Singapore by
Dean Tan Tai Yong, Associate Professor of History; Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; and Acting Director, Institute of South Asian Studies (NUS)
12:05-12:10 A few words about the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences (SAS),
and introduction of Ambassador Mahbubani by
Dean Rebecca W. Bushnell, Thomas S. Gates Jr. Professor of English, and
Dean, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
12:10-2 Final Lunch with keynote address by
Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani
Dean, Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy
National University of Singapore
2pm Shuttle bus back to Orchard Parade hotel
Afternoon and evening free (many participants from abroad will be leaving on early am flights out of Changi).
Abstracts:
Joseph Turow, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Media Storytelling, Marketing and “Soft Influence”: A Theoretical Perspective
Much of the output of media and marketing firms can be seen as storytelling, and observers often use the phrase “soft power”to describe popular transnational streams of media/marketing stories. The term “soft” signifies power not associated with “command behavior,” but rather with the “mysterious” ability to “attract,” in the words of Joseph Nye. But an industrial perspective on the drivers of popular culture makes clear that strong economic, political and even military activities-hard power-set the stage for the production, distribution and popularity of entertainment, news and advertising, and the soft influence that accompanies them. In complex ways, and often with substantial time lags, these complex forces shape stories that make people over time feel good about certain world views. Examples from the United States suggest a framework that might apply to thinking on soft power and new spheres of influence in South and Southeast Asia.
Durreen Shahnaz, consultant to media corporations and government agencies; former general manager for South and Southeast Asia, Reader’s Digest
Marketing Media in Asia
Media is perhaps one of the most dynamic industries in Asia today. In the past decade, media has cut across national boundaries and created new spheres of dominance. Drawing from practical experience, I will discuss the role of media in South and South East Asia’s social, cultural, economic and political development. The focus of the discussion will be on content, brand, culture, language, advertising across various forms of media and how all these are culminating into soft power for certain countries.
Faizal Yahya, South Asia Studies Program, National University of Singapore
Brand India and Southeast Asia
The Indian brand is strongly influenced by the perceptions and views that were shaped by the media. In this context, apart from the media, the Southeast Asian region was also strongly linked by history, culture and religion to India. Since 1991 and the implementation of India’s Look East policy, the Southeast Asian region has strengthened its links with India. From India’s perspective the Southeast Asian region is both a potential market place for Indian products and services as well as locations to manufacture products and develop services. There are several advantages for India to market its goods and services in Southeast Asia not only because of the shorter distance but also due to the sizeable number of people of Indian origin (PIOs) and the movement of Indian skilled and professional labour in the region.
Indian fashion, food and toiletries had always a strong presence in the Southeast Asian region. The greater demand and mobility of Indian labour in relation to high technology industries such as information technology (IT) is not only having a positive influence on the perception of a brand India but are themselves creating the marketability of Indian goods and services in the region. The aim of this paper will be to discuss how Indian branded goods and services are making in roads into the Southeast Asian region. The paper will also examine whether the perception of brand India is becoming more positive in the region. Indian goods may not be as low cost as Chinese goods but they are proving to be of better quality and costs less than Japanese made goods.
What are the future projection for Indian goods and services in the Southeast Asian region? There seems to be synergy of branding, marketing and retailing of Indian products in the Southeast Asian region. For example, Indian beers and wines could be marketed and retailed at the thousands of Indian speciality shops, restaurants and bars in the region.
Jatin Atre, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Neighbor’s Envy, Owner’s Pride: Impact of Changing Commodities to Brands in Southeast Asia
The perceptions of one country (let's call it Country A) in another (Country B) may be communicated through three primary conduits - men, materials, and the media. Thus, the "image" of Country A in Country B is formed through its expatriates living in B (i.e. men or women), its products consumed in the B (i.e. materials), or the way that media viewed in B depicts A. This paper focuses on how the quality, reputation, and overall experience with the products that originate in Country A, being used in Country B, affect not only the image but potential policies and socio-cultural alliances of country B with A.
People spend both time and money in consuming commodities. While the purchase decision may itself involve considering where the product originates, post-purchase experience with a foreign product affects the perception of the foreign country. Simply stated, a country's products and brands are its most omnipresent "inanimate ambassadors" abroad. Using India as a case-study this paper tracks, how the quality, reputation, and overall experience with Indian brands consumed in Southeast Asia play a major role in how the importing countries perceive India in other domains (e.g. politics, culture etc.) India is a quintessential case - as distinct phases in the type of products it exports (i.e. beginning from industrial goods to software products) may be linked to the perceptions and policies that the importing countries formed towards it at those junctures. Thus, it shows that a country's "inanimate ambassadors" posses unique soft powers in lobbying the market for cultural and political loyalties abroad.
Ariel Heryanto, University of Melbourne
New Media and Pop Cultures in(ter-)Asia
One concomitant aspect of the deepening industrialization in Southeast Asia since the 1980s is the series of new phenomena in mass communication, entertainment industries, and identity formations predicated on
consumption. Although these phenomena are inseparable from the political and economic dynamics of the region, they cannot be understood merely as a consequence of the latter. During the Asian economic meltdown in 1997 pop cultures in this area have been reinvigorated like never before. In contrast to political and economic studies of the industrializing Asia, those on pop cultures have generally been scant, empirically oriented, and
country-based.
Currently I am in a preliminary stage of investigating existing relevant literature on these new phenomena in comparative perspectives, identify some of the latest developments and insights, and raise theoretical and methodological questions that may inspire new ways of investigating this territory, and throw light on the trajectories of post-Cold War Southeast Asian studies.
Alyssa Ayres, Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania
Changing Spheres of Influence in Asia: New Configurations of Culture and Power
Americans have only just begun to grapple with the rapid changes taking place in Asia over the past decade. Foremost among these are the rise of China and India and what that will mean for the shape of power and influence in the future. Over the course of the past year, for example, three new trade books have sounded the warning bells of a future in which China and India stand to displace American economic influence in Asia, if not globally. The December 2005 East Asian Summit—convened, notably, in the absence of the United States—served to further this prognosis.
Nearly all of the focus, at least viewed from US shores, has centered on the location of economic production, be it manufacturing or knowledge work, low-cost garments or high-tech outsourcing. Yet there is another sphere, I would argue one as important, in which rapid changes are taking place: the fuzzy world of soft power. Globalization, so recently synonymous with Americanization, has begun to mean something different, an integration and space of cultural flow taking place beyond hoary core-periphery models. And it is in Asia that the spaces of interaction are radically changing, in spite of what at one time might have been formidable barriers of language or culture. While I would not argue that we are witnessing a new 1950s-style “Asianism” in the cultural sphere, it does appear that some new post-national sense of an Asian cultural sphere is in the process of formation. This paper—essentially two essays in progress—traces these spaces of cultural engagement within Asia, and attempts some linkages between cultural flows and power in this new world.
Rahul Mukherji - Institute of South Asian Studies, NUS; and Centre for Political Studies, JNU
Global Economic Integration in a Plural Polity: An Asian Model with a Difference
India’s growing exports, most notably in the IT and outsourced services area, its robust trade, and, its sustained growth, have earned it respect as one among the four emerging economies in the world with a major role in this century. India’s story of sustained growth driven by export orientation will shift the attention of the world to a story of political and economic change in a plural setting, quite different from explanations of the East Asian success stories. The political dynamics of economic change in India is especially relevant in a world where countries from East Asia to Latin America are increasingly embracing the democratic route to politics. The political and economic logic of India’s transition is neither discussed systematically in the development literature nor has it much appreciation within multilateral organizations. The soft power of a developmental model with strong and often authoritarian states drew its inspiration from scholarship on the East Asian miracle. India’s case offers the possibility of comprehending transitions in softer and more plural polities. It is especially relevant in a rapidly democratizing world. The political economy of institutional change shares some resemblance with stories of the major transitions in the US and UK. I will present the logic of change drawing from the transformations in trade and telecommunications policies in India. It is a story of ideas, interests and crises that gave birth to institutional change in India.
Arunajeet Kaur, National University of Singapore
The role of the migrating Indian professional in re-imaging India
The global shift towards knowledge-based economies has created a demand for professionals from India, particularly in sectors such as ICT in countries like the USA, Europe and Singapore. As e-commerce and business expands, the US has become more liberal in issuing H1-B visas hoping to attract relevant human talent that would quench the demand for knowledge workers. In Southeast Asia, Singapore has been in the race to become the talent capital, while Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor project has also created a demand for knowledge workers. With an education system grounded in the sciences and the prestige of its IITs and IIMs, India breeds graduates in the knowledge industries, equipped with the ability to communicate in the English language, that are in demand in particularly the developed countries. In 1999, Indians were the leading group to have attained H1-B visas in the US and recently, official informants have confirmed that Indians have overtaken Malaysians in successfully attaining professional employment passes in Singapore. The migration of India’s knowledge workers, especially since the early 90s, has been captured by scholars studying issues of brain drain (Khadria, 1999), the internalization of computer professionals (Lakha, 1992) and migration network systems (Xiang Biao, 2004). However, very little has been said about the impact of Indian professionals working abroad on the profile of the Indian Diaspora.