Water in many different forms and contexts is of central significance in Southeast Asia, and these differences are reflected in the vast range of spirits and deities. Despite wide variation, the most obvious distinction is between spirits associated with fresh and salt water. Those linked to water associated with fertility are typically regarded as female and sympathetic to human requests for assistance. By contrast, the spirits who inhabit turbulent river waters and patrol the shorelines may be male, female, or only vaguely gendered. Although they can be capricious and sometimes cruel, they are nonetheless amenable to individual or communal supplication. The same ambiguity is exemplified by the sea spirits, who extend rewards to those they favour but inflict harsh punishments when their anger is aroused. Yet regardless of their nature or the place with which they were associated, the ‘power base’ of indigenous spirits was always locally concentrated. The limitations in their reach help explain the appeal of cosmologies that extended across a much larger area, and even across the entire globe. The accompanying conceptualization of new and benevolent beings is especially evident in the maritime environment. Here human activity is male-dominated, and the male divinities and saints associated with supra-local belief systems might appear to be the natural guardians of mariners. Even so, culturally entrenched ideas of connections between water and maternal care facilitated the adoption of female deities as protectors of ocean-going voyagers.

This article explores how the Orang Suku Laut, an indigenous Malay roving fishing community, perceives the water world in Southeast Asia. Their rites of childbirth, naming and the enculturation of their young present invaluable ethnographic data that challenge us to develop new ways to conceptualise ‘water spaces’ as well as to widen our academic inquiry into the less understood ways of spatial imaginings.

This article assesses indigenous perceptions of water through a comparison of the water management strategies at three ancient sites located in different ecological zones of Myanmar. Two of our examples are in the high-rainfall regions of Lower Myanmar: Thagara in the Dawei River valley flanked by mountains on the east and west, and Kyaikkatha on delta lands at the egress of the Sittaung River. We contrast these adaptations with the micro-exploitation of the scarce water resources at Bagan (also spelled Pagan) in the arid zone of Upper Myanmar. In the southern wet regions, despite the different geographical setting of Thagara and Kyaikkatha, the focus was on drainage and control. Multiple ramparts and moats were used to conserve the scarce water in the dry months between December and April and control the heavy floods of the rainy months between May to November. At Bagan, sited directly on the broad Ayeyarwady River, water management of inland streams and seasonal lakes maximised the gentle slope of the plain while also coping with intermittent flash floods in the rainy months. The sites of Thagara, Kyaikkatha, and Bagan demanded specific adaptations but are alike in the absence of extensive transformation of the landscape. This balance of manmade and natural elements provides common ground despite their variable size and urbanised extent, ecological setting, and occupational sequence to highlight the shared significance of water management in their long-term urban success.

Water symbolisms permeate Ifugao religion, rituals, and oral tradition. Water plays a part in death, rebirth, and cleansing in Ifugao cosmology. As such, Ifugaos consider water as sacred. However, water is also central in Ifugao economy and politics. As a culture that highly values intensive wet-rice production in a mountain environment, managing access to water is necessary to maintain stability. Ifugao practices follow what Richard O'Connor described as the “agro-cultural complex” in which agricultural practices, social systems, and political, historical, and, cultural changes are understood as interlocking processes (O'Connor 1995). In this paper, we focus on the relationship between Ifugao water and agricultural rituals with the synchronizing and sequencing of agricultural activities. Using the concept of self-organization, we argue that water and agricultural rituals in Ifugao are not only meant to reinforce community cohesion, they also synchronize the farming activities crucial to a terraced ecology. Utilizing the practice of puntunaan (a ritual plot or parcel in the centre of an agricultural district) and the institution of tomona (the ritual leader of an agricultural district) as a case study, we observed that disruptions in the water and rice rituals stimulated great change in Ifugao sociopolitical organization.

This article explores the relevance of water in the cultural traditions of indigenous Lumad peoples of Mindanao island in the southern Philippines. Historically, Lumad identities and networks (whether political, social, or economic) were conceptualised according to the rivers on which people dwelt. Important ties stretched from the coast to the interior (i.e., between upriver and downriver communities), with water providing the path of least resistance in rough terrain. This stands in contrast to the present-day cultural and political divide between the uplands and lowlands, which are now dominated by mainstream ‘Filipino’ settlers, referred to locally as dumagat or ‘sea-people’. Given that Lumad ties to the land are profoundly visualised according to rivers, the salt-water origins of dumagats locate these interlopers at, or more often, beyond the moral boundaries of the Lumad universe. Meanwhile, in Lumad oral traditions, the movements of people across one generation to the next are traced according to river systems they have occupied, with proximity to water often equated with degree of civilization and cultural purity. Despite the passage of time, and decreased linear proximity from the original rivers, these primal riverine origins remain significant in the present day, as Lumads continue to socially prioritise the genealogies and networks of traditional political authority that are upstreamed from these oral traditions. Focusing on field data from the Higaunon ethnic group of northern Mindanao, this article analyses five examples of water being employed as a hermeneutic for how Lumads locate themselves in relation to other ethnic groups, the state, modern Filipino society, and their own cultural traditions.

This article is an attempt to stand back and re-imagine the landscape of the Red River over the last two millennia. The only static components of the Red River valley and delta are its mountains and geological deposits, everything else has changed over time. By marrying historical records with recent scientific findings on the Red River, this article outlines aspects of these changes; including changes to the climate and landscape, the possibility of shifting river courses, the movement of historical trade routes, and the rise of Thang Long–Hanoi.

The conflicts shaping territorial claims and counter-claims to overlapping areas of the South China Sea threatens to significantly damage Sino-Vietnamese relations, destabilize regional security arrangements, and alter the geopolitical status quo. The governments of both countries routinely invoke historical documents, commission scientific studies, and cite legal principles to justify their competing claims in the maritime region and the resources contained therein. The role different types of energy infrastructure play in the state-level disputes have received little attention, however. This essay addresses this oversight. In it, I foreground the complex ways not yet built infrastructure affect Sino-Vietnamese relations as well as our theoretical understanding of “the state”, especially with regard to Vietnam. Not yet built infrastructure refers to more than the assemblage of things that will be built in the future to power the economy, such as oil rigs, natural gas pipelines, and refineries. The concept also includes the ideological positions that presuppose the materialization of blueprint plans in physical form, i.e., the broader goals such infrastructure is meant to achieve. Towards this end, the article focuses on how state actors and their proxies conceptualize the likely impacts not yet built infrastructure will have upon their respective interests once construction is completed. The case study highlights how the need for energy security strengthens national security at some moments, weakens it at others, and both at still others.

Recent revisionist approaches to early pre-1500 eastern Indian Ocean history draw from and cross-reference epigraphic, archaeological, art historical, literary, cultural, textual, shipwreck, and a variety of other primary and secondary sources as these document the evolution of Southeast Asia from roughly 300 to 1500, before significant European regional presence became a factor. This study's focus is the transitional importance of c. 1000–1500 Indian Ocean international maritime trade and transit from the South Asian shorelines of the Bay of Bengal to the South China and Java Seas, which is conceived to have temporarily produced an inclusive eastern Indian Ocean zone of contact. In this then ‘borderless’ region there were a variety of meaningful contacts and material, cultural, and knowledge transfers that resulted in synthesis of Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian cultures and populations made possible by enhanced international maritime trade connections before European presence became a factor, a period often dated from the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese in 1511.