Through comparison of two families, Filipino and American, this essay finds that the axiomatic three-generational cycle of rise and decline, articulated famously by Andrew Carnegie, proved predictive for an American family firm but not for its Filipino counterpart. Over the span of a century, both families followed a surprisingly similar move from agriculture to food processing and then publishing. Thereafter, however, divergent state policies shaped different destinies for these two families. In the United States, impersonal enforcement of state security and economic regulation allowed the unchecked rise of finance capital that consolidated some 2000 US breweries, most of them family owned, into two transnational corporate conglomerates. In the Philippines, by contrast, persistent rent seeking by elite families, combined with personalised, partisan state economic enforcement, has allowed the continuing dominance of family-controlled corporations. Through comparison of two societies with close relations for over a century, we can see how state economic regulation can encourage the eclipse of major family firms in one society and the perpetuation of a political-economic oligarchy in another.

Studies of political families in the West focus on political inheritance, or the pattern of children following the careers of their parents. In contrast, studies of political families in other parts of the world focus on nepotism, corruption, and capturing of the political system in a particular area. In this study of political families in Thailand, I seek to distinguish between political inheritance and capturing a local political system. I then focus on political inheritance, finding that it is much more common than capturing a locality in Thailand. Working with a database of all members of the Thai parliament since 1932, I find that political inheritance benefits younger candidates and female candidates, with members of political families able to enter parliament at a younger age, and with women members of parliament more likely to come from a political family than men. I find further that political inheritance is found in all regions of Thailand, including Bangkok, and is not associated with different levels of development or regional cultures. With the strengthening of political parties and a declining birth rate, the number of families in the Thai parliament has declined, but has stabilised at a lower level. This indicates that political families are adapting to change, and can be expected to continue to play an important role in Thai politics.

Amy Chua catapulted to fame in the United States with the publication of her bestselling World on Fire: How Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2002) and a much-discussed Wall Street Journal excerpt from her next book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011). A wry account of a ‘Chinese’ mother's efforts, not all successful, to raise her two daughters to be high-achievers, Tiger Mother created some controversy owing to its critique of ‘Western’-style parenting and its perceived advocacy of a ‘Tiger Mother’ brand of parenting that drew on the author's own experience of being raised by Chinese-Filipino immigrant parents in America. Not only did Battle Hymn generate heated discussion in America about the stereotyping of Asian-Americans as ‘model minority’; it also tapped into American anxieties about the waning of U.S. power in the wake of a rising China, while provoking spirited responses from mainland Chinese women looking to raise their children in ‘enlightened’ ways. This article follows Amy Chua's career as an ‘ethnopreneur’ who capitalises on her claims of ‘Chineseness’ and access to ‘Chinese culture.’ Drawing on localised/provincialised, regional, and family-mediated notions of Chineseness, Chua exemplifies the ‘Anglo-Chinese’ who exploits – and profits from – national and cultural differences within nations as well as among Southeast Asia, the U.S., and China in order to promote particular forms of hybridised (trans)national identities while eschewing the idea of mainland China as the ultimate cultural arbiter of Chineseness.

The Sa'dan Toraja of upland Sulawesi, Indonesia have long been celebrated in the anthropological literature for their elaborate procession-filled mortuary rituals, which draw vast networks of kith and kin to mourn, memorialise, and reaffirm familial bonds and obligations. Whether residing in the homeland or abroad, most Torajans underscore funeral rites as the most vital expression of Toraja familial and cultural identity. Although some estimates suggest that more Torajans now reside off-island and overseas than remain in the homeland, extended familial funerals in the homeland continue to have a centripetal physical, economic and emotional pull. While various scholars have documented the ways in which remittances from Toraja migrants or the presence of international tourists have transformed Toraja funerals in recent decades, this article focusses on the role of social media in navigating global familial relationships and rituals. Indonesia has the largest number of Facebook subscribers in the world, and this study offers the first exploration of the ways in which Facebook interweaves far-flung familial relationships. This study also examines house-society orientations in the Toraja highlands and addresses the use of Facebook by Torajans in the homeland to cultivate continued allegiances to ancestral houses (around which extended Toraja families are oriented). Finally, this article also examines a large-scale 2012 Toraja funeral in order to spotlight the contours of the Toraja family in the current era of neoliberalism and cyber-technologies. The article offers insights into the ways in which various Torajans navigate social media and non-local corporations to image, reimagine and negotiate familial identities for various audiences (local, national and transnational).

Political parties in Indonesia and in other parts of Southeast Asia have become vitally dependent on the financial support of individuals or conglomerates with large private fortunes. A remarkable new development is that some of the billionaires who have long sponsored political parties have decided to out themselves as political leaders, and thus to adopt the style of oligarchs. I define an oligarchy as a society featuring systematic conflation of political and economic power within the same individuals or within small, elite groups of such individuals in a manner that is visible, tolerated and hence legitimated. The gradual shift from clandestine money politics to open oligarchy is a significant challenge for contemporary liberal democracies. Conflicts of interest between the demands of public office and their private interests would seem difficult to avoid for politicians who also run large business empires and own great estates. On the other hand, for billionaire sponsors of political parties to come forward and stand for public office personally also means that their hitherto clandestine influence is becoming more transparent, and their conduct and decisions more subject to public scrutiny and accountability. This article describes how both direct and indirect ways of conducting money politics operate and coexist within different types of political parties in Indonesia today, what the significance of these differences is and what is changing; with special reference to the 2014 parliamentary elections in Indonesia.

This paper considers Hmong messianism in Asia and beyond from a historical perspective, arguing that its thematic repetition of themes and ideas requires a new understanding of subjectivity at the intersections of the psychological with the social and political. Hmong messianic movements have adopted a variety of forms ranging from the more indigenous to the more explicitly Christian. While the attempt is not to seek a particularist ‘ethnographic-historical’ understanding of these recurrent movements, nevertheless the contexts of colonialisation, mass migration and marginal social status are suggested as providing the essential background for such an understanding. Several different theoretical approaches to understanding such movements are considered, with some attention to major theorists of structure and agency. It is argued that ultimately messianic movements can be appreciated in terms of a kind of ‘anticipatory consciousness’, and are enabled to challenge current social orders because they are motivated by a particular notion of time, which combines a medieval and revolutionary notion of simultaneity with one of historical progression which is, however, not gradualist. A ‘central irreducible core’ of ritual beliefs and actions among the Hmong emerges from this consideration of historical movements, which may demand a reconsideration of older and largely abandoned notions of cultural structure.