The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia by Barbara Watson Andaya

The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia



Download The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia




The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia Barbara Watson Andaya
Language: English
Page: 353
Format: pdf
ISBN: 0824829557, 9780824829551
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

"The Princess of the Flaming Womb," the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male-female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women’s roles and perceptions. Andaya explores the broad themes of the early modern era (1500–1800)—the introduction of new religions, major economic shifts, changing patterns of state control, the impact of elite lifestyles and behaviors—drawing on an extraordinary range of sources and citing numerous examples from Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Philippine, and Malay societies. In the process, she provides a timely and innovative model for putting women back into world history.

Andaya approaches the problematic issue of "Southeast Asia" by considering ways in which topography helped describe a geo-cultural zone and contributed to regional distinctiveness in gender construction. She examines the degree to which world religions have been instrumental in (re)constructing conceptions of gender—an issue especially pertinent to Southeast Asian societies because of the leading role so often played by women in indigenous ritual. She also considers the effects of the expansion of long-distance trade, the incorporation of the region into a global trading network, the beginnings of cash-cropping and wage labor, and the increase in slavery on the position of women. Later chapters draw inspiration from recent work that stresses the need for historical contextualization of interactions between women and "the state" and gender constructs in elite households inflected by class priorities. Throughout, her creative approach to familiar sources offers surprising results and, while always alert to the difficulties of generalization, affirms the existence of a Southeast Asia where the history of women can be legitimately investigated.

Erudite, nuanced, and accessible, The Flaming Womb makes a major contribution to a Southeast Asia history that is both regional and global in content and perspective. It offers a new view of the region that will appeal to students and specialists in a variety of disciplines.

From the Back Cover

"This is the masterwork of one of Southeast Asia’s finest historians. At last justice is done to the distinctiveness of pre-colonial Southeast Asia gender relations. Barbara Andaya’s balanced and erudite summation of what we know about women’s lives and roles makes this book essential reading both for women’s history and Southeast Asian studies." —Anthony Reid, author of Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce

"This is a fascinating book by one of the finest historians of Southeast Asia. Barbara Andaya explores the history of women in early modern Southeast Asia with imagination, meticulous craft, and innovative methods, with special attention to human relations rather than state formation. Given the paucity of written evidence, she probes into other kinds of ‘texts,’ such as performance and textiles, opening up new possibilities for research. She finds stories of women's changing status and gender relations in diverse circumstances, from women’s involvement with land, agrarian production, local markets, and world trade, to their relation to state power in taxation, corvée labor, and household economy. Andaya brilliantly lays the foundation of an entirely new field and raises important questions for historians to come. It is a must-read." —Thongchai Winichakul, author of Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation

"The Flaming Womb is a deeply learned work, Barbara Watson Andaya at her best. It reveals an extraordinary range of reading on Southeast Asia and beyond. Andaya draws on examples from Europe and other regions of Asia to show the value of comparative analysis and to point to possible avenues of research. Her scholarship is marked by care in the use of sources, and historiographical issues are always at the fore. Although she is wary of generalizations, she also has the courage to hazard conclusions." —Jean Gelman Taylor, author of Indonesia: Peoples and Histories

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