Lenore Manderson - Coming of Age in South and Southeast Asia: Youth, Courtship and Sexuality

NIAS S TUDIES IN A SIAN T OPICS

15. Renegotiating Local Values

Merete Lie and Ragnhild Lund

16. Leadership on Java

Hans Antlv and Sven Cederroth (eds)

17. Vietnam in a Changing World

Irene Nrlund, Carolyn Gates and Vu Cao Dam (eds)

18. Asian Perceptions of Nature

Ole Bruun and Arne Kalland (eds)

19. Imperial Policy and Southeast Asian Nationalism

Hans Antlv and Stein Tnnesson (eds)

20. The Village Concept in the Transformation of Rural Southeast Asia

Mason C. Hoadley and Christer Gunnarsson (eds)

21. Identity in Asian Literature

Lisbeth Littrup (ed.)

22. Mongolia in Transition

Ole Bruun and Ole Odgaard (eds)

23. Asian Forms of the Nation

Stein Tnnesson and Hans Antlv (eds)

24. The Eternal Storyteller

Vibeke Brdahl (ed.)

25. Japanese Influences and Presences in Asia

Marie Sderberg and Ian Reader (eds)

26. Muslim Diversity

Leif Manger (ed.)

27. Women and Households in Indonesia

Juliette Koning, Marleen Nolten, Janet Rodenburg and Ratna Saptari (eds)

28. The House in Southeast Asia

Stephen Sparkes and Signe Howell (eds)

29. Rethinking Development in East Asia

Pietro R Masina (ed.)

30. Coming of Age in South and Southeast Asia

Lenore Manderson and Pranee Liamputtong (eds)

31. Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 18951945

Li Narangoa and Robert Cribb (eds)

Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
Studies in Asian Topics Series, No. 30

First published in 2002

by Curzon Press

Richmond, Surrey

Typesetting by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies

Nordic Institute of Asian Studies 2002

While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, copyright in the individual papers belongs to their authors. No paper may be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission of the author or publisher.

British Library Catalogue in Publication Data

Coming of age in South and Southeast Asia : youth, courtship

and sexuality. - (NIAS studies in Asian topics ; no. 30)

1.Youth - South Asia - Sexual behaviour 2.Youth - Asia,

Southeastern - Sexual behaviour

I.Manderson, Lenore II.Liamputtong, Pranee

306.708420954

ISBN 0-7007-1399-9 (cloth)

ISBN 0-7007-1400-6 (paper)

Some books are executed as swiftly as they are conceived, from the point of view of the editors if not the authors. Others are conceived no less in the spur of the moment - a good idea crystallized with quick thinking - but they drift along, sometimes riding the winds of optimism, at other times caught in a calm. This was such a book.

Our correspondence dates back five years, when we were first caught by the possibilities of bringing together works that dealt with young people, courtship and sexuality. Our interest was fueled by the urgency of a continuing epidemic of HIV that pointed to the importance of understanding sex and sexuality among the young. Sadly, the public health impetus was prophetic. Today, HIV and AIDS are an even greater problem in Asia and elsewhere than at the time of the inception of this volume. But our interest was also epistemological, methodological and ethnographic. The population in which we were interested was an elusive one. How old is youth, how arbitrary are its boundaries? If adolescence is a cultural construction, how do we make sense of sexual development, social maturation, the emotions of early courtship, the rituals of romance in its diverse forms? How is coming of age understood by young men and young women, and by their parents and guardians, in different social and economic formations? What clues do the romantic fictions of old ethnographies hold as we seek to make sense of a part of life that has long passed most authors? And in the time of AIDS, a time also for young people everywhere complicated by rapid social change, urbanization, increased formal education and globalization, how are the issues of sexual debut, sexual health, courtship and marriage to be addressed?

During the slow course when this book took shape, its contributing authors sometimes had not one child, but two - families were created, children grew up, people changed jobs, moved cities, migrated, and worked on other projects. The frustration of some authors at the sluggish progress of this volume was sometimes palpable, and we owe a great debt to all of them that they succumbed to our cajoling and stayed on board. We owe particular thanks also to Andrea Straub of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies for her keen interest and swift response to us, at a point at which we were almost stilled by lethargy, to Leena Hskuldsson for her fine editing, and to Gerald Jackson for his extraordinarily swift and exact typesetting, patience and support. In Melbourne, we thank John Litaridis, Christina Hall and Keir Reeves for their technical assistance and, as they worked on the manuscripts, their enthusiasm for the work.

While younger authors gave birth to children and other books, our own children moved into the ages of the young people whose lives are the substance of this book. As a result, the chapters have a particular salience, the ethnographies counterpoints of the evolving lives of those with whom we live. Our children provided us, largely unintentionally, with much understanding and insight. With love, we dedicate this book to Tobi and Kerith Manderson-Galvin, and Emma Inturatana and Zoe Sanipreeya Rice.

Lenore Manderson and Pranee Liamputtong
Melbourne, July 2001

LINDA RAE BENNETT is a medical anthropologist and a research fellow at the Key Centre for Womens Health in Society, University of Melbourne. She is currently completing a doctoral thesis on youth sexuality and reproductive health in Eastern Indonesia with the University of Queensland. She has been involved in consultations on health sector reform, primary health care and family planning, and HIV/AIDS in Indonesia. Her research interests include gender and development, research ethics and qualitative methodologies, family planning, and violence against women.

WARUNEE FONGKAEW is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Nursing, Chiang Mai University. She is currently a head of the project Youth Family and Community Development (YFCD) which conducts research projects on HIV/AIDS prevention with young people; gender, sexuality and reproductive health. She holds a Ph.D. in nursing from the University of Washington, School of Nursing, Seattle.

MEGAN JENNAWAY is a medical anthropologist who has carried out extensive field research into womens health and sexuality in North Bali. In 1998 and 1999, she was an associate lecturer in Indonesian language and Asian Studies with the University of Queenslands Department of Asian Languages and Studies. Currently she works as a freelance writer, concentrating on the areas of fiction and ethnography.