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Asian families as sites of state politics: introduction

Youyenn Teo

Online publication date: 05 August 2010

To cite this Article Teo, Youyenn(2010) 'Asian families as sites of state politics: introduction', Economy and Society, 39: 3,
309 — 316
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 Economy and Society Volume 39 Number 3 August 2010: 309
316

Asian families as sites of

state politics: introduction
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Youyenn Teo

Introduction

Let us maintain the principle and values of Indonesian families forever. We do

not have to copy the lifestyles of foreign nations that are not in line with the
spirit and the personality of our nation.
(President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, speaking at a
National Family Day gathering in July 2005)1
In public rhetoric in East and Southeast Asia, ‘the family’ stands out as
a sacred unit that exists in a relatively autonomous realm
somehow primordial
and pre-political. Political leaders have construed the family
whether broadly
as ‘the Asian family’ or in some cases more narrowly, as in ‘the Japanese
family’
as that which must be protected from the polluting influences of the West.
In the context of rapid development/industrialization, Japanese bureaucrats have
expressed fears that Western capitalism would overcome tradition and under-
mine the family (Garon, 2002), while national leaders such as Malaysia’s
Mahathir Mohamad and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew have famously pro-
pounded the importance of upholding good Asian values and protecting
families from the sexual mores of the West, not only for the good of families but
for the very wellbeing and continued development of the burgeoning nations in
East and Southeast Asia (Barr, 2002; Chua, 2004; Stivens, 2006; Tu, 1996).
Although the position that ‘Asian values’ are central to development waned
after the economic crises of the late 1990s, the notion that there are timeless
traditions with regard to family, which require continuous protection by states,
remains resonant. In particular, although ‘Asian tradition’ has lost its sparkle as
an explanatory tool in theories of development, it remains a powerful rhetorical

Youyenn Teo, Assistant Professor, Division of Sociology, School of Humanities & Social
Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore
637332. E-mail: yyteo@ntu.edu.sg

Copyright # 2010 Taylor & Francis

ISSN 0308-5147 print/1469-5766 online
DOI: 10.1080/03085147.2010.486213
 310 Economy and Society

device for all sorts of social policies put forth by states. State elites continue to
portray themselves as protectors of families.
This special issue brings together scholars of East and Southeast Asia to
problematize this conception of state
family relations and to shed light on the
myriad ways in which the familial is a site of politics. Collectively, their work
deconstructs the myth of ‘the Asian family’ as primordial and apolitical by
illuminating the various ways in which political activity
and particularly the
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actions of states
permeates this realm. Drawing on the cases of Japan, China,
Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, the authors examine how states in these
contexts have set the parameters of what count as families, how political
contestations have found fertile ground in the familial and how these
contestations have affected the form and content of state
societal relations
and in some cases given shape to the very notion of the ‘state’.

Going beyond ‘social problems’

In recent years, much research on families has centred on addressing ‘social

problems’. The issues of divorce, lowered fertility, delayed or non-marriage
and ageing populations have come to the fore. This is particularly so for those
parts of the world where industrialization has altered the material realities of
people’s lives as well as attitudes, norms and expectations around education,
work and family formation. Some of this work deals with demographic trends
in the industrialized North (Brewster & Rindfuss, 2000; Castles, 2002; Frejka
& Calot, 2001; Kligman, 2005; Lutz et al., 2006; McDonald, 2000), while
others have focused on comparable emerging issues in Asia, particularly East
and parts of Southeast Asia (Jones, 2007; Jones et al., 2008; Leete, 1987, 1994).
The scholarship on Asia has taken on a high level of urgency because
demographic transitions here have happened within a much shorter time
period than in Europe and demographic pressures are expected to have serious
negative social and economic consequences. This body of work is important in
the contemporary context and its findings have direct implications for the
policy-making process, particularly for global debates about the appropriate
social measures necessary for supporting the elderly. Many scholars have taken
a progressive stance insofar as, for example, they point directly to the lack of
gender equity as an important reason for declining fertility rates (Castles, 2002;
Hobson & Olah, 2006; McDonald, 2000) or to the extent that they have called
on states to step up public support for the elderly (Lee, 1999).
Despite this, that family research has focused heavily on demographic
trends has come at a certain analytical price. Particularly in discussing family
in Asia, the heavy emphasis on resolving demographic issues implies a
tendency towards reifying a social problems framework. This in turn
inadvertently maps onto states’ claims that there is some primordial form of
family that is under threat from capitalist development. In assuming
industrialization or globalization as the abstract agents of change, ‘the family’
 Youyenn Teo: Asian families as sites of state politics 311

becomes a somewhat coherent unit that is acted upon and ‘the state’ an
external (as opposed to constitutive) agent trying to ‘protect’ it.
In this way, the realm of the family in Asia paradoxically receives much
attention and yet is under-scrutinized. In particular, insufficient attention has
been paid to how it is a site of politics
where we can locate political struggles,
the articulations of meanings about state and society, and the limits and
possibilities of political cultures in a given context. Scholars of Asian
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development and political economy, for example
in trying to understand

the conditions of economic development, societal changes, political struggles,
state roles and state
society relations
have rarely seriously looked to this arena
for answers.2 The field could benefit from the analysis of the family, or perhaps
more accurately the familial, in Asia not only insofar as its structural form
accommodates or does not accommodate capitalist activities but also in terms of
how
given its immense symbolic importance as a primary and fundamental
institution in human life
it is a site where contestations over the appropriate
responsibilities of states and citizens, and directions for societies, play out.
This special issue, in focusing on the familial in Asia as a site of politics,
destabilizes the trope of the primordial and private family and the ameliorative
state. It demonstrates the importance of including family in analyses of political
economy, as an institution that is not simply impacted on but which is also in
many ways constitutive of state- and nation-building processes. The articles in
the issue highlight the complex and sometimes contradictory power struggles
and negotiations that render possible or impossible particular definitions of
‘family’ in contemporary Asia, as well as the consequences of these processes for
larger questions of political culture and state
society relationships.
The articles contribute to existing scholarship in at least three ways.
First, they reveal the sustained actions of states in the realm of the familial
and thereby challenge the public rhetoric around primordial families and
ameliorative states. Second, they go further than this to show the varied
ways in which states in East and Southeast Asia have called upon the
institution of family to bear various material and symbolic burdens for society.
Finally, the articles reveal how the familial has become a site of political
contestations, with far-reaching implications. I turn next to elaborating on
each of these points.

The state in the family

The articles in this issue describe how combinations of policies, laws and
nationalist rhetoric produce particular definitions, boundaries, roles and
responsibilities of families and family members, as well as form the basis of
states’ relationships to citizens’ lives. They show how the familial is given
content through explicit state actions.
Taking a historical perspective, Sheldon Garon’s article challenges the notion
of Japanese family systems as timeless traditional structures. He argues that
 312 Economy and Society

Japanese leaders have tried to dampen expectations of state welfare by

alluding to images of distinctive Japanese families who take moral respon-
sibility for the needy. He shows the state’s continual and evolving roles in
shaping the institution of the family in two important ways: as the primary
realm for welfare provision and as the domain of women as managers of
households. His work demonstrates that it is through a long series of policy
decisions and laws that a particular definition of family has been carved
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in Japan.
Looking at Singapore
another case where the state has enthusiastically
used the familial and ‘tradition’ to manage expectations of state welfare

Youyenn Teo argues that the site of the family is one of production, a space
where ‘society’ and ‘state’ are given content. The Singapore state’s family
policies provide a shared context through which people collectively generate
norms and ideals about family forms, typical familial practices and the very
significance of family to ‘Singaporeanness’. The practices construed as
resulting from deep traditions turn out to require sustained and intense state
interventions.
In the case of Malaysia, Maznah Mohamad argues that the question of what
counts as a legitimate family is highly charged and unresolved. As ethno-
religious politics enter the picture, states exert a strong influence in drawing
legal lines around ‘families’
often with very serious consequences for
people’s wellbeing.

Material and symbolic burdens

The task of showing states’ roles in shaping the very definition of family is
particularly important because the articles in this issue reveal that East and
Southeast Asian states rely heavily on the institution of the family
to provide ostensibly public goods. Drawing on the powerful trope of the
essentialized Asian family, states place pressure on citizens to conform to
certain forms of family and thereby fulfil various functions
from the pursuit
of education, medical care or old-age security to moral education. Ironically,
the rewards to society that come from such public goods are then taken for
granted as further evidence of the importance of family in Asia, and this
inadvertently contributes to state legitimacy.
Mary W. Crabb describes a growing middle class in China and its fervent
relationship to education. Here, she points to education reforms as reflecting
the Chinese state’s efforts at political and cultural re-orientation. The state,
indeed, takes on an explicit and sustained role in cultivating familial ambitions
in particular modes of education. In this way, she argues that struggles over
and anxieties about education are constituents of a changed ethical regime in
China in which ‘state agendas to foster economic development and national
strength through improvements in human capital align with private ambitions
to secure a ‘‘middle-class’’ and ‘‘modern’’ lifestyle through educational
 Youyenn Teo: Asian families as sites of state politics 313

achievement and lifelong learning’. In its education reform policy, the

Chinese family becomes an instrument of governing
a crucial unit which
extends and modifies the state’s capacity to shape the conduct of the
social body. In both these cases, and to some extent in the articles on
Singapore (Teo) and Indonesia (Newberry), we see state definitions of
families having profound implications for the burdens family members bear
on behalf of society.
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Not just about the family

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the articles included in this issue shed
light on how politics around the familial have consequences beyond the
boundaries of families. Contributors demonstrate the varied ways in which ‘the
family’ is a site for battles over the appropriate form and content of
governance, and that these battles set the tone for political cultures and
state
society relations.
For Garon, one of the key issues at stake is the role of the state in providing
public goods. His article makes clear that the political economic situation of
Japan is rapidly evolving. The demographic shifts in recent years have made
the Japanese state’s position of minimal involvement in direct welfare provision
increasingly untenable.
Other articles in the collection further explore how family has become the
locus of contestations around governance. Taking the case of Indonesia, Jan
Newberry complicates the notion of governance by tracing both governmental
and non-governmental forms of social management in the post-Suharto era.
The Suharto era’s version of an idealized nuclear family
built around
population planning programmes and women’s unpaid social welfare work
in communities
shows significant continuities with the delivery of social
welfare programmes in the era of democratization. In the aftermath of the
1997/8 Asian economic crisis and the downfall of the New Order government,
international institutions and non-governmental organizations have re-pur-
posed New Order forms of governance for other ends. On the surface, these
appear to signify an erosion of state power and a shift to transnational non-
state influences as well as local non-governmental initiatives; Newberry argues,
however, that they are still built upon state mechanisms of governance. In
particular, the renewed focus on children may inadvertently represent new
possibilities for state anti-democratic control over the population.
Politics around the family shape the issues of democracy and democratiza-
tion in Malaysia as well. Mohamad’s article demonstrates how the familial has
become a crucial arena where battles over ethno-religious rights and the
meanings of nation and citizenship are waged. She argues that the
intensification of state Islamization should be seen as a project to create a
distinct Malay-Muslim majority identity. Control over laws by the advocates
of Islamism is one of the more reliable means of securing community strength.
 314 Economy and Society

She argues that the formation of the Islamic juridical family and the
patriarchal Malay-Muslim family is a reflection of this project of ‘grand-
standing’ the authority of Islam. In detailing several high-profile court cases
in recent years, she shows how battles in family law reflect conflicts between
secular citizenship rights and Islamic doctrines. In contemporary Malaysia,
the latter seem to have gained the upper hand, at great cost to individual
citizens and their families. She concludes that the paradox of this situation is
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that families and children are torn apart for the good of keeping together the
imagined unified collectivity of a Malay-Muslim majority.
Finally, Teo argues that pronatal policies in Singapore may have been largely
ineffective in altering demographic trends towards delayed marriage and low
fertility, but that they have nonetheless produced a social body united in its
orientations towards an idealized Singaporean family. In the process, ‘the state’
takes very concrete ‘institutional
disciplinary’ and ‘ideological
nationalist’
forms, becoming palpable in everyday lives and in people’s imaginations. The
relationships established between Singaporeans and the state via family policies
ultimately strengthen the state’s capacity for rule.
Collectively, then, the articles demonstrate the importance of taking the
familial in East and Southeast Asia seriously not just as a site of social
problems arising from capitalist development but also as a venue where
political contestations play out and political meanings and practices are
forged.
In political and popular discourse, as well as embedded in scholarship, some
of the credit for Asia’s astounding development has been attributed to its
strong families and corresponding traditional values. The articles in this issue
problematize this perspective by showing the many ways in which state actions
have set the parameters for what count as families. In all of the cases described,
it becomes clear that ‘traditional values’ do not spring forth automatically, and
that state policies select, nurture and transform particular beliefs and practices.
This process has imposed great costs on some parties in a few of the cases and
produced what amounts to differential citizenship rights and responsibilities.
Ultimately, the familial has become an important site for governance: the
discipline exerted over citizens as specific family members allows states greater
capacity for rule.

Acknowledgements

The papers in this special issue were first presented in April 2007 at a
conference, ‘The Changing Asian Family as a Site of (State) Politics’, co-
organized by Youyenn Teo and Hsiu-hua Shen and hosted by the Asia
Research Institute, National University of Singapore. For their support of
the conference and/or feedback on various versions of this introduction, I
thank Hsiu-hua Shen, Gavin Jones, Chee Heng Leng, Maznah Mohamad,
Chua Beng Huat, Bryan S. Turner, Jan Newberry, Sheldon Garon, Chang
 Youyenn Teo: Asian families as sites of state politics 315

Kyung-Sup, Mary Crabb and the anonymous reviewers at Economy

and Society. Thanks also to Kelvin Kwok Wai Chia for excellent research
assistance.

Notes
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1 See Muninggar Sri Saraswati (2005).

2 There is a substantial body of critical feminist research that examines the role of
states in (re)producing gender inequalities. Some of this work has of course advanced
our understanding of how states are active producers of particular forms of families. For
a recent and excellent example of this scholarship, see Haney and Pollard (2003). The
bulk of scholarship on Asian political economy, however, rarely takes the family as a site
for serious political analysis. Instead, attention centres on explicitly political activities
such as elections and on policies that rest squarely in the economic realm.

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Youyenn Teo received her PhD in sociology from the University of California
at Berkeley in 2005. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research
Institute, National University of Singapore, from 2005 to 2007 and is currently
Assistant Professor in the Division of Sociology at the Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore. She has published articles in Critical Asian Studies,
Signs and Population, Space and Place. She is working on a book manuscript
tentatively titled Neoliberal morality in Singapore: How family policies make state
and society. Her current project focuses on the intersections between welfare
policies and state ideals around the familial.