The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 12)

This paper conducts firstly a historiographical research of the concept zhiyin (perfect connoisseur) and explores the mirror and empathic relationships between Nature and creators as well as creators and their auditors/viewers. It will try to clarify the role of imagery intuitions (xingxiang zhijue 形象直觉) in seizing the zhi 志 (intention) of an artist by searching for the signified of the statements “zhi zai gaoshan 志在高山 ” (aiming at the “high mountains”) and “zhi zai liushui 志在流水 ” (aiming at the “flowing streams”). These statements appear in the story of the Chinese zither qin player Boya and the lumberjack Zhong Ziqi, the perfect connoisseur of Boya's music. This anecdote can be found in many Chinese classics such as the Taoist text Liezi 列子. It was later sung with the qin and fictionalized with many Confucian reminiscences under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), thus, gradually moving away from its original Taoist version. Classical Chinese artistic creation pays attention to the power of the intuitions, while Western artistic creation, at least before the birth of modern art in Western countries, was knowledge-based and focused more on the representation of the real world. Drawing on studies of ancient Chinese music and poetry, as well as Chinese and Western aesthetic theories, our paper will explore in its second part the evolution of the artist’s “intention”. This examination will allow us to understand the interdependent and sometimes interchangeable relationship between “zhi” (intention), qing 情 (emotions) and yi 意 (intention, idea) - major notions in Chinese aesthetics.

Early modern India (1500-1800 CE), particularly the littoral, witnessed a host of “nationalities” as migrants, expatriates, itinerant merchants, diasporic residents, communities, agents, adventurers, mercenaries, diplomats, envoys, missionaries, sailors and more. Europeans and Asians thronged and interacted with “natives” in cosmopolitan hubs like Delhi, Agra, Masulipatnam, Fort St. George, Golconda, Bijapur, Surat, and also scattered in various ports, like Daman, Bassein, Goa, Chaul, San Thomé etc. and smaller towns and the countryside. What were the perceptions of the self and the other for the European diaspora and itinerants in their purported identities of themselves as Portuguese, Dutch, English, French and/or European, the natives as “Moors” or “Gentus”? How do the constructs of nation, religion, class, ethnicity, language and race express in interstitial identities in contemporary European accounts? From ‘Passeur culturel’ Italian Manucci - a liaison person masquerading as a physician, to English mariner Thomas Bowrey’s experiments with cannabis and horror at brutal indigenous religious practices, French Abbé Carre’s accounts of quivering ‘conversion’ to Islam, lured by fabulous riches, French traveler/physician Bernier’s acutely alienating ‘othering’, European mercenaries employed by native rulers, what glimpses can we discern of the nature of cultural adaptations and transformations experienced and effected by the Europeans in their sojourns in pre-modern India? In terms of perceptions of the self and the other, how did European contemporary accounts compare, juxtaposed with vernacular and Sanskrit accounts with their references to ‘‘Hunas’’ (Europeans) with ‘‘svetavadanah’’ (White-faces)? Can such vicissitudes nuance our understanding of distinct cultural spheres and world-views in the global context of the pre-modern ethos?

Since 1951, the alliance with the United States has so predominated Japanese security considerations that the UK-Japan security partnership, its origins and revival, have received limited attention. Previous UK-Japan security partnerships had existed as imperial alliances prior to the Great War, in which they fought as allies, and re-emerged in the most unlikely situation amid immediate postwar animosity as Britain sought to deal with surrendered Japanese troops and recolonise large areas of South-East Asia. Cooperation occurred during the occupation of Japan, and expanded to include Korean War minesweeping, yet from 1951 Anglo-Japanese security engagement lay largely dormant other than defence technology trade until a return to minesweeping cooperation in 1991. The re-founded security partnership can be traced to this naval operation, and to civilian and military personnel forming functional relationships during peace, humanitarian, and security operations. Despite lacking an Economic Partnership Agreement with Japan, the UK was the first non-alliance strategic partner to conduct air combat training and army exercises in Japan, while continuing extensive naval cooperation. Brexit shocks, however, dented images of the UK as Japan’s gateway to Europe for trade and security collaboration. This paper examines the century from Anglo-Japanese alliance, through post-war occupation/re-armament, Cold War stasis, to post-Cold War engagement and partnership, combining historical and International Relations methodologies. It attempts to evaluate how the UK-Japan security relationship changed throughout the twentieth century, how it developed in the century from the end of the alliance up to 2022, and what continuation can be charted through alliance, wars, animosity, distant trading amity, and to the embrace of strategic partnership? Many of these elements are to be included in a Thomas W. French (Ritsumeikan University) edited volume (2022).

This paper discusses one of the covert methods Indonesian President Soeharto (1966-1998) employed to buttress and justify his grip to power and subsequent decades-long authoritarian rule. After the Indonesian Army staged a Coup on 30 September 1965, killing six generals and one lieutenant, it put the blame for the atrocities on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The PKI-affiliated Indonesian Women’s Movement (Gerwani) was specifically targeted. With the concoction and nationwide dispersal of a misogynistic hoax, the Army had given itself the legitimization to not only torture, imprison, and irreversibly stigmatize Gerwani-women but also to impose an anti-Gerwani – hence anti-Communist – State gender ideology. This State gender ideology could not exist in the absence of the Gerwani hoax. Even more crucial, Soeharto’s New Order was founded on this hoax, and for his regime’s existence, it perpetuated gendered, anti-Communist fearmongering in direct and indirect ways, including film. Not only were all Soeharto era films stringently subjected to censorship, but film narratives were also interconnected with State narratives – and hence anti-Communist gender propaganda. This paper scrutinizes the narrative of the Gerwani hoax and its references to Indonesian folkloric female monstrosities. It argues that horror films produced during the New Order regime which include a ‘monstrous-feminine’ function as psychological warfare tools to perpetuate the Gerwani hoax in order to legitimize Soeharto’s hold on power.

Anthropologists have, in recent years, taken renewed interest in interspecies sociality and communication. Part of this enterprise has been an attempt to locate anthropological alternatives to the theory of mind concept in psychology. How may an anthropological theory of mind inform multi species ethnography, particularly within a framework of sensory methodology? In light of these concerns, the author explores recent debates on mutual knowability in interspecies lifeworlds, focusing on the doing/undoing of communicative congruence in ethnographic examples of wolf-human (and other) relations in South Central Siberia. Of particular interest are ethnographically situated experiences of body orientation and expression within landscapes and through material implements, such as landscape formations.

The paper discusses the spatial and textual organization of the inscriptions on poetic features called Khlong Konlabot at Wat Pho monastery and of the inscriptions narrating the tales of Ramakian at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha—both in the heart of Old Bangkok—by employing traditional manuscripts as a source for comparison and investigation. The inscriptions are arguably unique among the epigraphic corpora of Thailand because they are closely related to the visual elements surrounding the written texts. The Khlong Konlabot inscriptions of Wat Pho consist of graphics and diagrams, while the inscriptions at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha narrate mural paintings of the Ramakian along the Gallery of the Temple. The textual and spatial organization of both groups of inscriptions, therefore, is more complex than other inscriptions which consist merely of written prose texts. In order to organize the inscriptions, traditional khoi-paper manuscripts were used to plan how the textual elements would correspond with the visual elements, to draft the inscription texts, and sometimes to record which poets and royal scribes were to compose which inscriptions. These manuscripts reveal the process of preparing and producing the inscriptions along with determining how the texts and visual elements were arranged in the inscription space. This paper, therefore, aims to demonstrate the complicated relationship between these two different media in traditional Siamese writing culture: inscriptions and manuscripts.

The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) recommendations adopted by UNESCO in 2011 serve as an instrument to respond to challenges to cultural heritage in urban environments faced by rapid urbanization, climate change, and urban conflict. It outlines the knowledge and planning tool emphasizing on the documentation and mapping of landscape characteristics to facilitate decision-making processes within a framework of sustainable development. Mapping typically precedes planning and design processes and methods of visually representing risks and vulnerabilities of the territory and formulating them in light of sustainable development of the area, can offer different perspectives to stakeholders and institutions albeit is practiced in limited capacities and innovation. The article explores eidetic mapping as a tool for visually representing diachronicity and socio-spatial configurations HULs to aid the decision-making process. The case study of the ancient port town of Jaffa, Israel serves as a testing ground for the proposed method, documenting the diachronous evolution, spatial and socio-economic attributes, and testing its relevance for a new sustainable urban design approach to complex historic urban environments. As this research is based on historical information, the article is categorized as qualitative research with a descriptive-analytic approach while the combination with digital tools takes a heuristic approach. The paper will discuss how the research processed data from primary sources of old maps, photographs, and other information and explorations through visualizations. The above experiment using archival records and integrating them with GIS tools as an integral part of the HUL approach, reveals the potential of what can be termed as eidetic mapping method in the process of sustainable and resilient urban design and planning for historic urban environments. The potential of this hybrid form of geo-spatial analysis of a historic urban landscape, documenting and reconstructing its palimpsest of information, of spatial configurations and their diachronic social and cultural evolution is presented.

This study focuses on two interrelated issues for “rediscovering” Bengali felons’ quotidian life in Malaysia and Singapore during the colonial period. First, it narrates the colonial policies regarding convicts’ labourers and their categorical ambiguities in the Straits Settlements. The second set of issues illustrates the transportation and governing system of the convicts and their integration process with mainstream society. By examining a range of archival and non-archival records, this study shows the inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility of convict labourers and the making of cosmopolitan society in British Malaya. Furthermore, it suggests that the Bengali convicts were significant among other South Asians, and this study opens up a new avenue of mobility and subaltern studies on Asia.

While China may be geographically distant from continental Africa, there is evidence that contact between the two originated millennia ago, although the Silk Road only found its way to sub-Saharan Africa during the Sung Dynasty of 960-1279AD, thanks to Chinese Shipbuilding. Subsequent dynasties saw the contact fizzle out, and it was only in 1956 that diplomatic relations were rekindled with Egypt, followed by other African countries emerging from colonialization. Since the late 1990s the relationship escalated rapidly, and in 2013, China became sub-Saharan Africa’s largest export and development partner supported by initiatives such as FOCAC and BRICS. The relationship remains fragmented though, dependent on bilateral relations between China and individual African nations – the 54 countries are vastly different in their colonial histories, cultures, socio-economic development and geopolitical attributes. While the Silk Road holds enormous potential for Africa, yet Africa itself is the constraint to this potential. The lack of integration within Africa, and the complexity of trade due to infrastructural bottlenecks and the institutional dysfunction of many countries, serves to limit the potential of the Silk Road in Africa. This paper argues that bilateral relations continue to characterise the relationship between China and Africa, and that the Silk Road aspirations in Africa are simply an afterthought based on China’s existing relationships with individual nations. The silk road in sub-Saharan Africa lacks strategic orientation and coordinated effort, a function of Africa’s dichotomous environment. For the silk road to truly complement Africa’s hunger for integration in the global arena, Africa needs to change the status quo and remove the intra-African significant barriers to trade, in order to facilitate the silk road’s potential in Africa. The paper considers the responsibilities of African nations in this regard, with specific reference to the proposed African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Years ago, while on fieldwork for my Master’s thesis to interview Sindhi merchants in Japan, I found myself an unwitting accomplice to the routines of the women of this community. In their day to day running of the household, the Sindhi women’s interactivity webbed intricate networks. They would regularly engage in cross-cultural negotiations with the Japanese housekeeper, vendors at the wet market and neighbourhood co-op. They took charge of cultural events at the community’s social hub and through the rigorous structure of women’s groups they fuelled the grapevine with fellow housewives within the diaspora. Fluid sites of exchange emerged as I realized a world of movement in the mundane everyday; routes of gendered mobility paved in practice yet unrecognized – neither in scholarship on the Sindhi diaspora nor by the community, and therefore unarticulated. In this paper, I reflect on the ‘left-behind’ as bodies – and stories – in motion who could come to light when analyzed at the intersection of gender and mobility, where mobility is relational and multi-scalar in dimension. To explore the worlds of women as ‘left-behind housewives’, I consider the approach of mobile ethnography for both its theoretically expansive potential and its value as method. The latter I believe, would allow me to move in tandem with the women even as they appear stationary – immobile (?) – in the supposed humdrum of their everyday existence. My discussion here informs my research design for fieldwork in the near future as I seek to understand the lives and roles of women in Japan’s Sindhi merchant diaspora for my PhD thesis.

In this presentation, I wish to describe the spatial politics of Yangon (before 1989 officially known as Rangoon), Myanmar’s largest city, focusing on the relatively short period of “Transition” from rule by the Army-State to a hybrid military-civilian government as defined by the 2008 Constitution. This period ended suddenly on February 1, 2021, when Senior General Min Aung Hlaing carried out a coup d’état and established a new martial law regime, the State Administration Council (SAC). The Transition – ending with a reverse course back to military rule – lasted a little less than ten years (March 2011 – February 2021); but even before the Army-State took back power, the direction this “hybrid democracy” was taking was ambiguous and problematic.

As China has increased its presence and cooperation on multiple fronts under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), this paper proposes a multidimensional concept of ‘Chinese Linkage’ to understand various layers and levels of engagement under BRI. I conceptualize the Chinese Linkage in Asia based on the seminal work of Levitsky and Way’s (Western) Linkage along five dimensions, namely, economic, social, cultural, communication, and intergovernmental ties for 32 countries in Asia for the period 2000-2020, with 2013 as a benchmark year for the BRI launch. By analyzing diverse cases in Asia including sub-regions such as South, Southeast, and Central Asia, I examine the cross-national variation in the degree of Chinese linkage in the BRI partner countries and their patterns of engagement. This region-wide analysis allows understanding of various mechanisms of exchanges and public diplomacy in a systematic manner under China’s BRI in Asia.

This paper examines the significant impacts of the colonial ethnographic film and travelogue on the construction of Indonesia's visual culture and its reconstruction in the contemporary. The colonial scenes have become inseparable components of cinematic experience in contemporary Indonesian films' mise en scène and are viewed as visual elements of progress. The scenes where the camera is attached to the front of the slow-moving vehicles as it travels into the thick jungles, cruises along the untamed streams and glances into the development stages of the wilderness into an industrial society are familiar. The amalgamation of the colonial scenes relates to how Indonesian sees themselves as postcolonial being in the tension of becoming a modern subject in a globalised world and as ecological agents in the rich biodiversity in the landscape they inhabit. Cinema, in this regard, opens the path to normalising the unequal conditions, justifies the colonial act, and presents it as a spectacle. We can easily find similar kinds of images in movie theatres or web-based and social-digital media. The images which problematised the questions of identity, representation, postcoloniality, and modernity in contemporary Indonesia, an oblique position of moving forward with the notion of progress, but never entirely eschewing the domain of the Others. Understanding this complexity is pertinent to open the dialogue concerning Indonesia's position as one of the richest biodiversity landscapes and one of the most populated in the world. The crucial stage that can shape Indonesia's ecological policies and its cultural outputs, where humans are valued as pertinent key players.

The International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE), otherwise known as the Tokyo Trial, has received new scholarly attention in Japan since the early 2000s after previously sealed archives were made public. The trial has also received renewed attention in literature and film. Journalist Yamasaki Toyoko’s best-selling novel Futatsu no sokoku (Two Homelands, 1983) is loosely based on David Akira Itami’s work as a Nisei monitor at the trial. In 1984 NHK released a film version of the novel titled Sanga moyu (The Mountains and rivers are burning). Other recent media depictions of the trial include Tokyo saiban (Tokyo trial, 1983) by Kobayashi Masaki and the recent 2016 Netflix mini-series The Tokyo Trial directed by Pieter Verhoeff and Rob W. King. Twenty-eight defendants, including military leaders, diplomats, and civilians were accused of war crimes. There have been many criticisms of the trial’s lack of impartiality. One major reason is the conviction of diplomat Shigemitsu Mamoru, who was an advocate of peace. Although he received the lightest sentence of Class A War Criminals, many critics say he should not have spent a single day in prison, much less in the courtroom. While there are brief references to him in Yamasaki’s novel and the various film versions of the trial, to date there has been no translation of his prison diary. Shigemitsu never took the witness stand so there is no official record of his point of view in the trial transcript. It is through his prison diary that one can hear the voice of this stoic figure of Japanese wartime diplomacy.

Since the 2nd Belt and Road Forum (BRF) held in 2019, a ‘Green and Sustainable Silk Road’ (GSSR) has become a major narrative promoted by the Chinese government. Broadly speaking, the GSSR agenda involves development projects aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in areas such as renewable energy, resource efficiency, climate resilience and adaptation, green infrastructure, and environmental governance. In a narrow sense, however, ‘greening’ of the Silk Road refers to Chinese lenders and investors’ green practices throughout the roll-out of the project. The overall aim of this study is to examine China’s overseas lending and investment practices within the wider context of the GSSR agenda. The investigation takes the form of a case-study, setting out to assess China’s lending and investment in Uzbekistan’s renewable energy sector (including hydro, solar, and wind power projects). Section 2 discusses the Chinese government’s efforts to unlock and promote green finance cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Section 3 offers a brief overview of Uzbekistan’s transition to clean energy, with a particular focus on the regulatory framework, energy development strategy, and procurement process. Section 4 analyses in detail Chinese lenders and investors’ involvement in hydro, solar, and wind power projects across the country. The purpose of the conclusion is twofold: 1) to assess Chinese lending and investment practices in Uzbekistan’s renewable energy sector, and 2) to elucidate the role of the host country in shaping the GSSR agenda.

The emigration movement to Manchuria began in full scale with the establishment of Manchukuo in 1932, when approximately 300,000 Japanese people migrated to northeastern China to the end of the war. Recent scholarship on Manchuria has focused on non-state, non-elite actors, unlike postwar scholarship that centered its attention on national economic and political elites in order to critique the governing structures and their operation. Following this trend, this paper explores the settlers from Tokyo who were poor but dreamed about renewing their lives in Manchuria, thereby supporting the Japanese empire. Considering the sheer number of settlers who participated in the emigration movement, cases of Tokyo might not reflect largely on the national efforts. However, Tokyo occupied an indispensable place in the emigration campaign by modeling the patterns and structures that would form the national agenda. This paper examines why many people willingly supported the occupation of foreign land and analyzes the complex apparatus that structured and managed the mobilization operation without imposing a cohesive authoritarian regime. The paper concludes that what enabled such popular participation was a widespread culture of imperialism made evident in the action of the poor Japanese citizens who chose to become farmers in Manchuria.

China and Italy are both countries with a strong culture and long history, that share positive bilateral relations. In 2019, Italy was the first EU country to sign a MoU with China on collaboration within the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s major diplomatic outreach system. However, more than two years later, most agreements have not materialized yet. Is it due to political implications or economic interests? It is arguable that one of the main reasons for this slow development is connected to communication barriers and differences in identities and perceptions, and therefore to the cultural relations between the two countries. By applying the Constructivist theories, it is possible to demonstrate how the lack in mutual understanding can hinder deeper cooperation between people and countries. This leads to the main questions addressed in this paper: what are the obstacles to a deeper Italy-China partnership, how to overcome them and improve the overall relations? This paper is the first part of a bigger thesis that will be completed in 2023. Rome and Beijing had planned a “China-Italy 2020 Year of Culture and Tourism”, to enhance the people-to-people exchanges, tourism and cultural cooperation. However, due to the Coronavirus pandemics the events have been postponed to 2022. This paper analyses the Italian public opinion on China during 2020, when instead of learning about the other culture, people were forced to practice social distancing. It will be necessary to compare the 2020 public opinion polls with surveys conducted after the 2022 Year of Culture and Tourism. If the results will show improvement in the Italian public opinion on China and increased interstate cooperation, it will be possible to demonstrate the idea that the collaboration between the two countries can improve thanks to further cultural exchanges and mutual understanding.

This paper focuses on the community engaged endeavors of an art collective based in Xisan village, an urban village in the outskirt of Guangzhou, under a loosely organized socially engaged art project entitled “Xi-San Film Studio.” The project, founded by curator Zheng Hongbin in collaboration with his artist friends in early 2017, has focused on raising the publicness of contemporary art and expanding the space of civic participation for ordinary people through artistic activities. In particular, intersecting art, documentary making, and citizen journalism, the collective embeds their social criticism and activism through producing and disseminating short documentaries that center on the daily experiences of people (both native villagers and migrant residents, artists themselves included) living in urban peripheries. Situating Xi-San Film Studio and its activities within the context of Guangzhou’s urban development and market-driven social transformations, the paper discusses how these documentary makers seek to bring to light challenges, uncertainties, and social injustices residents have to negotiate with in the village. It illustrates that through focusing on personal lives of many residents and the village’s changing built environment, their films provide valuable documentations of how lives are lived by people in geographically, economically, and socially marginalized locations.

Despite participating in the occupation of Japan from March 1946 through to October 1947, the participation of the Indian Army and Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) in the Allied Occupation has been largely ignored. This chapter provides background to the despatch of the Indian troops to Japan and outlines some of the duties and activities of both forces during their deployment to Japan. It introduces the make-up of both contingents and some of the interactions between the troops and the local Japanese as well as other troops.

The outbreak of the coronavirus has upended people’s lives with marginalized populations the most impacted. In Hong Kong, domestic workers face pressure from their employers who expect them to simultaneously keep the household clean and COVID-free, and to provide care duties to families, children and the elderly. Many workers have reported taking on additional workload, working longer hours and in some cases, continuing to work through their days off. Concurrently, domestic workers worry about their families back home who may have lost jobs or had fallen ill during the pandemic. Workers carry the additional financial burden to support and keep everyone afloat in this time of global health crisis. With few social protections and lack of policies to protect domestic workers in Hong Kong, they are left vulnerable, and their health and well-being severely affected. This paper seeks to explore the impacts of COVID-19 on Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. Through preliminary surveys and semi-structured interviews, the paper examines how domestic workers have adjusted to the 'new normal’, and made use of varying strategies and resources to survive in this time of crisis. The paper also discusses the issues and challenges faced by domestic workers, and contemplates on the uncertainties of COVID-19 and lasting after effects of the pandemic on this community.

In recent years, a growing number of Chinese urban TV dramas both adopt a women-oriented perspective and feature main female characters with strong career ambitions for upward social mobility. Noticeably, a common narrative stock in this type of women-centric urban TV dramas is the struggle of young white-collar women of rural background to establish their lives in the cities while being constantly haunted by their original families with backward gender norms. Conducting narrative analysis on three popular women-centric urban TV dramas between 2016 and 2020, this paper illuminates how rural China has been “othered” in urban dramas that represent and underline young women’s autonomy from an apparently feminist stance in contemporary China. By doing so, the paper fills the gap in the existing literature of Chinese TV studies in terms of the intersectionality of gender, class and the urban-rural hierarchy in media representations. The paper demonstrates that these three women-centred TV dramas analogously construct an abject rural other that disrupts the rural migrant protagonists’ endeavour to establish a normalized middle-class life in urban China. The stereotyped and essentialized rural otherness on the one hand serves to highlight the protagonists’ individual aspirations and career pursuit in spite of their immanent tensions. On the other hand, it also consolidates and romanticizes the urban middle-class masculine authority which underpins the reemphasis of women’s domesticity in contemporary China.

In 1915, the first middle school for Taiwanese students, Taichu middle school (臺中中學校), was established in central Taiwan. The campaign attracted nearly 250,000 yen in donations from 203 local elites across the island. This study will focus on the campaign first, making extensive use of the donor lists. By utilizing prosopographical, GIS and SNA methods, this study aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the donors, focusing on their family and educational backgrounds, social network and spatial distribution. With these methods, this study extends the discussion to lesser-known local elites, rather than just limited to well-known figures. To be sure, this case happened in the context of Japanese suppression of the last large-scale arms rebellion and the emergence of the modern-style Taiwanese socio-political movement in the mid-1910s. So this study will trace the linkage of the Taichu Middle School Establishing Campaign with the later socio-political movement in the 1910s to the 1930s. From the failed attempt of Taiwan Assimilation Society (臺灣同化會) in 1914 To the end of the Taiwan Parliament Petition Movement (臺灣議會設置請願運動) in 1934. This study will conclude with a discussion on continuities and ruptures the elites faced in the post-war era, with 78 socio-political organizations across two periods as the subjects, focusing on the experiences of the Taiwan Political Construction Association (臺灣政治建設協會, TPCA) members. This study will provide visualization and discussion of the formation and the transformation of the Taiwanese local elites, shedding new insights on changing configurations in different socio-political contexts.