Introduction: Diversity of Nation-building in East and Southeast Asia

Abstract: The current issue of the European Journal of East Asian Studies addresses the topic of nation-building. It has been chosen because the term ‘nation-building’ has been revived, so to speak, in the social sciences as well as in anthropology and history, for several reasons. It has also become a common term these days in the arena of international politics; its notion is positive and clearly distinguished from more ‘alarming’ terms such as ‘nationalism’. In the field of international relations, nation-building has gained a prominent position in the debate on failing or even failed states, conflict management and development theory. It is legitimate to say that nation-building has re-entered the debate, for it had been relegated to the backbenches during the latter half of the Cold War period—at least in the perception of Western observers. In Asia and particularly in the post-colonial nation-states of South and Southeast Asia, however, nation-building has been a constant part of the political agenda since the 1950s. The articles in this volume relate to this importance. The Western world turned its eyes back towards nation-building when the great conflict areas of the 1990s, such as Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan and lately Iraq, offered a gruesome picture of what state failure and societal fragmentation can mean to the inhabitants of an entity called a nation-state. On an international level, nation-building is currently discussed from an instrumental perspective. As Jochen Hippler points out, nation-building is regarded ‘either as a preventive political option to avoid the break-up of the state and social fragmentation, as an alternative to military conflict management, as part of military interventions or as an element of post-conflict policies’.1 The instrumental character is obviously emphasised by external observers of processes of nation-building rather than by insiders. The view from within a