Papers

• A Template of Virtue: Gender, Domesticity and Commemoration in Thai Cremation Volumes Karandeep Singh Universität Hamburg

  This paper examines how convention and its subtle defiance are negotiated in Thai cremation volumes of the early twentieth century, with particular attention to the representation of women. Cremation volumes are printed booklets produced for funerals, especially in Thailand, and are typically distributed to attendees at the cremation ceremony as commemorative objects. While these texts are often understood as formulaic commemorative objects embedded within elite funerary culture, I argue that they also constitute a space in which social norms are both reproduced and quietly reconfigured.
  Focusing on a selection of cremation volumes associated with female subjects, the paper analyses how gendered identities are constructed both through narrative omission as well as selective emphasis. In several cases, the apparent absence of biographical detail is not merely a reflection of social convention but also signal tensions surrounding propriety, authorship and the conditions of acceptable female visibility. At the same time, the involvement of elite male figures in the production of these texts complicates questions of agency, revealing how hierarchical relationships shape socially sanctioned gendered template for commemoration.
  By situating these materials within broader practices of patronage and textual production, the paper explores how acts of restraint, refusal, or narrative minimization can be read as forms of convention-defiance, even when they appear to conform outwardly to established norms. It further considers how such dynamics are mediated through language and form, contributing to the construction of socially legible identities. In doing so, the paper contributes to ongoing discussions in Southeast Asian studies on gender, power and identity, while offering a historically grounded perspective from the Thai context. It suggests that cremation volumes, far from being static or purely conventional texts, are sites of negotiation where cultural expectations are both upheld and subtly contested.

• Digital Hyperreality and Financial Deviance: The Convergence of Online Gambling and Digital Debt Traps in Indonesia Fajar Nugraha Asyahidda Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia Siti Nurbayani Kusumaningsih Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia

  In the rapidly evolving digital landscape of Southeast Asia, Indonesia has witnessed a significant escalation in social deviance through the convergence of online gambling and predatory digital loan practices. This paper examines how digital communication platforms, characterized by sophisticated algorithms and aggressive marketing, reshape social conventions and foster a new form of financial dependency. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hiperrealitas, this study explores how digital interfaces create a “simulacrum of success” that obscures economic risks and normalizes transgressive financial behaviors. Using a qualitative exploratory approach with semi-structured interviews in Bandung a region with high digital loan penetration this research identifies the mechanisms of the digital debt trap. Findings reveal that social media acts as a primary catalyst, utilizing “personalized recommendations” and “fear of missing out” (FOMO) to erode psychological resistance against gambling. The study highlights a “simulative circuit” where digital platforms provide both the temptation (gambling) and the immediate, albeit exploitative, means of participation (instant digital loans). This interaction creates a tension between established social norms of financial prudence and the disruptive, impulsive practices promoted in the digital sphere. The research further presents
  the Digital Resilience Education (DRE) model as a strategic intervention to reconstruct digital ethics and critical literacy among vulnerable populations. By situating these phenomena within the Indonesian context, this paper contributes to broader sociolinguistic and sociological debates on how Southeast Asian digital cultures negotiate power asymmetries and identity in an era of digital capitalism. The results emphasize that the root of this crisis lies not merely in individual impulsivity but in the representational visual products that manufacture a new, deviant reality of action.

• Satirical Caricature as Convention Defiance: Political and Social Contestation in Vietnam Le Thuy Hien University of Naples L'Orientale

  This presentation traces the evolution of political cartoons in Vietnam, from the satirical visual language of traditional Đông Hồ woodcut paintings to the digitally circulated political humor of the present day. It examines the colonial era, when French caricaturists simultaneously exposed abuses of power and reinforced racialized stereotypes, shaping early visual discourses of domination. The emergence of modern Vietnamese cartooning is explored through the rise of iconic figures such as Lý Toét, whose misadventures captured tensions between rural customs and urban modernity in the 1930s.
  The paper then considers the divergent trajectories of cartooning in North and South Vietnam during wartime, the suppression of political satire after 1975, and its gradual reappearance following the Đổi Mới reforms. In the contemporary digital era, widespread Internet and social-media use has expanded the reach of political cartoons even as state regulation persists. A case study of Tuổi Trẻ Cười illustrates how contemporary satire navigates censorship, critiques corruption, and adapts traditional motifs. Together, these developments reveal political caricature as a persistent form of convention-defiance—one that continues to mediate social contestation and provide a managed outlet for public sentiment in modern Vietnam.

• The Crosses We Bear: Juan Dela Cruz and the Convention of the Filipino Everyman Jose Santos Ardivilla University of the Philippines, Diliman

  Juan dela Cruz has long functioned as the visual embodiment of the Filipino everyman, circulating widely within the repertoire of political cartooning. Typically depicted wearing the salakot, he is coded as rural, poor, and representative of the “masses.” This paper argues that such representations operate as a stabilized visual convention that naturalizes a narrow and diminished image of the Filipino subject.
  Situated within Southeast Asian contexts of layered hierarchies and communicative negotiation, the figure of Juan dela Cruz reveals how visual practices both reflect and reproduce power asymmetries. Through repetition, humor, and visual shorthand, political cartoons construct a recognizable yet reductive identity, rendering the Filipino everyman legible while simultaneously constraining his possibilities.
  As an artist-researcher and political cartoonist, I engage critically with this cache of images—particularly the persistent figure of Juan dela Cruz, interrogating how such visual conventions endure and shape the limits of representation. Adopting an arts-based research methodology, this paper presents a comic that intervenes in and defies this convention. Rather than serving as illustration, the comic operates as a site of analysis, an act of convention-defiance that disrupts the stability of Juan dela Cruz as a unified national figure.
  In attending to both the image and the name “dela Cruz,” one of the most common surnames in the Philippines, the paper examines how anonymity and multiplicity intersect in the construction of national identity. It proposes comics as a critical method for engaging the dynamics of convention and transgression in Southeast Asian visual culture, foregrounding how representation itself becomes a site of both control and resistance.

Abstract

Keywords

• Convention and transgression
• Digital hyperreality
• Gendered agency
• Philippines
• Representation
• Southeast Asian digital culture
• commemoration
• cremation volumes
• digital loan practices
• digital satire
• epistemic violence
• national identity
• online gambling
• political cartoons
• social deviance
• visual culture