Brief Introduction Top

Eric C. Thompson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore.

He holds a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology (2000) from the University of Washington (Seattle) and has been a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (2000-2001). He joined the National University of Singapore in December 2001.

His research interests include the social and cultural effects of urbanism in rural Malaysia, cultural identity and subjectivity, the information technology and scholarly networks in Southeast Asia, and the cultural evolution of ASEAN regionalism.

Eric's doctoral dissertation research examined social and cultural relationships between rural and urban Malaysia. In this work he drew on cultural geography as well as sociocultural anthropology in formulating a theory of urbanism as a social and cultural force unbound from the space of cities and at work in the Malaysian countryside. The work was inspired by the lived experience of the residents of Kampung Sungai Siputeh, located in northern peninuslar Malaysia and by Malay cultural geographies of "KL-and-kampung". The published results of the research are found in Unsettling Absences: Urbanism in Rural Malaysia (2007, NUS Press) as well as several journal articles and book chapters (Thompson 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2004b).

During the last year of Eric's doctoral studies, he had the opportunity to work from 1999-2000 as a intern and later coordinator for Southeast Asia research for the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle as a liason with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta and several other research institutes in Southeast Asia. The project was to increase the number of Southeast Asia based experts in an international database of Asia policy experts. The project led to an interest in studying Internet-mediated communication among scholars in the field Southeast Asian Studies. Eric's first substantial research project after joining the National University of Singapore at the end of 2001 was to complete a survey of academics in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States regarding patterns of email communication. He has used this work to build on Syed Farid Alatas and others' development of academic dependency theory (Thompson 2004a, 2006a).

These two early projects were carried out using methods of often rhetorically opposed research traditions - the first in the tradition of largely interpretive, ethnographic, qualitative analysis; the second utilizing quantitative, statistically oriented survey methods. Eric's current work seeks to develop cultural theory (in many ways tied to his original interests in cultural geography and the complexity of identity) in the no-man's land between these often contentious camps of qualitatively vs. quantitatively inclined researchers. Since 2003, the focus of these efforts have been in a project on the cultural evolution of ASEAN as a supra-national geobody (Thompson 2006b; Chulanee and Thompson 2007; Thompson, Chulanee and Hidayana 2007).

Teaching Areas Top

SC2218 Anthropology and the Human Condition
SC2220 Gender Studies
SC3206 Urban Sociology
SC4213/5103 Qualitative Research Methods
SC6770 Graduate Research Seminar

Publications Top

BOOKS/MONOGRAPHS AUTHORED

• Thompson, E.C. (2007) Unsettling Absences: Urbanism in Rural Malaysia. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
   
  

ARTICLES IN JOURNAL

• Thompson, E.C., Chulanee Thianthai and Irwan Hidayana (2007) “Culture and International Imagination in Southeast Asia,” Political Geography 26(3):268-288

  
   
  

• Chulanee Thianthai and E.C. Thompson (2007) “Thai Perceptions of the ASEAN Region: Southeast Asia as Prathet Phuean Ban,” Asian Studies Review 31(1):41-60

  
   
  

• Thompson, E.C. and Zhang Juan (2006) “Comparative Cultural Salience: Measures Using Free List Data,” Field Methods 18(4):398-412

  
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2006) “Singaporean Exceptionalism and Its Implications for ASEAN Regionalism,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 28(2):183-206
  
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2006) “Internet Mediated Networking and Academic Dependency in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States,” Current Sociology 54(1):41-51.
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2004) “Rural Villages as Socially Urban Spaces in Malaysia,” Urban Studies 41(12):2358-2376.
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2004) “Internet Adoption and Use in the Indonesian Academy: Issues of Social and Institutional Hierarchy,” Jurnal Antropologi Indonesia 28(73):20-31.
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2003) “Malay Male Migrants: Negotiating Contested Identities in Malaysia,” American Ethnologist 30(3):418-438.
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2002) “Migrant Narratives of the Rural in Malaysia,” Sojourn 17(1):52-75.
   
  

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

• Thompson, E.C. and Zhang Juan (forthcoming) “Immigration, Transnational Municipal Governance, and Reconfigured Ethnicity in Singapore,” In: Impressions: The Goh Chok Tong Years, Bridget Welsh, ed., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins SAIS Press (accepted for publication).
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2002) “Rocking East and West: The USA in Malaysian Music” In Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia, T. Craig and R. King, eds. pp.58-79.
   
  

SHORTER ARTICLES/COMMENTS IN JOURNAL

• Thompson, E.C. (2006) Comment on “Transgenderism and Gender Pluralism in Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times,” Michael Peletz, Current Anthropology 47(2):332-333.
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2006) “The Problem of ‘Race as a Social Construction’,” Anthropology News 47(2):6-7.
   
  

BOOK REVIEWS

• Ethnicity in Asia. Colin Mackerras, ed., for Journal of Asian Studies 2004, 63(2):480-482.
   
  
• Cultural Contestations: Mediating Identities in a Changing Malaysian Society. Zawawi Ibrahim, ed., for Asian Journal of Social Science 2003, 31(2):364-366.
   
  

PUBLISHED REPORTS

• Thompson, E.C. (2004) Tribal Signifiers and Intersubjectivity in a General Theory of Group Identity. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Working Paper No.167, National University of Singapore.
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (2003) “Student Perceptions of Teachers, Courses, and Classmates at NUS,” CDTL Brief 6(5).
   
  
• Thompson, E.C. (1999) “Indonesia in Transition: The 1999 Presidential Elections,” NBR Briefing, No. 9. Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research.