Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept

Abstract: With renewed economic interest in the Southeast Asian region following the `peace dividend' of the early 1990s, numerous hydrodevelopment plans have been initiated in the Mekong basin. The river-as-resource, in a glibly bioregional metaphor, has been transformed from a Cold War `front line' into a `corridor of commerce', drawing six riparian states together in the pursuit of sustainable development through economic and infrastructural integration and cooperation, promoted by multi- and bilateral donors and lending institutions. Through a brief examination of the discursive framing of Mekong hydrodevelopment, this paper uncovers some of the implications of an emerging regional geopolitical imagination centred on the naturalising metaphor of the watershed. Through a discussion of the increasing involvement of private capital, and the politicisation of resource use, the implications of hydrodevelopment for Laos, an upstream state currently undergoing major hydrodevelopment, and Cambodia, a downstream state, are explored.

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Abstract: Open nearly any general text on Southeast Asia and you will find that some space is taken up in the introduction assessing the reality and validity of the regional framework on which that text rests. Likewise, with the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), many scholars question whether or not the regional entity amounts to anything of any substance. In this article, I mount a defence of Southeast Asia as a regional framework in scholarship and draw attention to ASEAN as an evolving regional entity. While the concept of Southeast Asia among researchers and the politics of ASEAN are distinct issues, I treat them together in this article to highlight their interrelationship and parallels. My primary objective is to outline the displaced politics – of both academic and realpolitik varieties – embedded in deconstructive and dismissive critiques of both Southeast Asia and ASEAN. Critiques of both are not without value, as they sharpen our attention to processes through which supra-national regionalism is produced. Nevertheless, I argue that regionalism remains a valuable method in both politics and scholarship, in no small part as a counterweight to the hegemony of methodological nationalism in contemporary thought and research.

Abstract: Debates concerning the definition of Southeast Asia as a region are intense and ongoing, and the delimitation and rationale for regional analysis have become increasingly problematical in the era of globalisation. Southeast Asia is characterised, though not clearly and unequivocally defined by cultural diversity and openness. It has a long history of cultural connections with other parts of the world and it demonstrates the importance of physical migrations and cultural flows into, across and out of the region, which have generated crosscultural encounters and social intercourse, with the Indian sub-continent, East Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. These interactions have in turn resulted in cultural hybridisation, synthesis and mixed or mestizo communities, the phenomena of pluralism and multiculturalism within national boundaries, and in the co-existence of culturally different majority and minority populations. The processes of cultural differentiation and interaction have made Southeast Asia one of the most culturally complex regions in the world and have complicated the process of regional definition. In spite of these cultural complexities, there are those who have argued that it is ‘the ubiquity of publicly displayed cultural forms’ and the fact that Southeast Asia is ‘arguably the best place to look for culture’ which serves to define it as a region. The centrality of culture in the definition of this region will be explored and it is proposed that the conceptualisation of the relationship between culture and identity might be a way forward in addressing these regional complexities.

Abstract: This paper reviews the directional shifts in human geographical research on Southeast Asia from 1945 to the present. It first begins with an overview of the identity of the region as conceived in various cultural traditions, such as the Greek, Arabic and Indian traditions. This is followed by an evaluation of regional geographies of Southeast Asia in the post-war period, highlighting the pre-eminence of the geostrategic definition of the region and the failure to come to grips with its rich cultural-historical identity. The paper then goes on to show that, arising from the changes in conceptual developments and methodologies in geography, the early regional emphasis then shifted to systematic concerns, with a movement away from ‘encyclopaedic’ to ‘adjectival’ geography (economic, urban, population, political, cultural and historical) and a greater emphasis on issues concerning national development. Since the 1980s, there have also been fewer regional works on Southeast Asia and though there are now many more indigenous geographers within the region, much of their research is based on their own national or provincial areas. However, this may shift again, given that rapid economic growth has now given the region prominence. Certainly, there is renewed multi-disciplinary interest in Southeast Asia.