Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept
About: This article is published in Asian Journal of Social Science.The article was published on 1983-01-01. It has received 11 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Southeast Asian studies & Far East.
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01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In recent years, the conceptual underpinnings and continued validity of area studies in a globalizing world have been severely questioned as discussed by the authors, leading to a common view that area studies is in a state of “crisis.
Abstract: In recent years the conceptual underpinnings and continued validity of area studies in a globalizing world have been severely questioned. Emanating from a critique of Orientalism, but also reflecting changing institutional politics in the American academe following the end of the Cold War, the attack on area studies has spread across the globe. This has resulted in growing pronouncements on the failure of area studies in producing a synthesis of knowledge that transcends disciplinary divides and power hierarchies between the Western and non-Western world. The spread of this critique has led to a common view that area studies is in a state of “crisis”. Ironically, however, this critique of area studies comes at a time when regional perspectives are gaining ground in defining regions based on local priorities. The critical agendas that propelled the attack on area studies in Euro-America appear to undermine such promising effort. As the crisis of area studies galvanized scholars to deliberate over its fate, some scholars in Asian Studies have sought to find “afterlives” for area studies by pointing to regionally located scholarships as alternative sites from which Euro-American centric visions could be denaturalized. In the words of Miyoshi and Harootunian: The afterlife thus refers to the moment that has decentered the truths, practices, and even insitutions that belonged to a time that could still believe in the identity of some conception of humanity and universality with a Eurocentric endowment and to the acknowledgement that its ‘provinciality’ must now be suceeded by what Said called ‘a contrapuntal orientation in history’ (Miyoshi and Harootunian 2002, p. 14).
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose an alternative path to community in which a lack of state capacity forms the common knowledge foundation between states, and demonstrate the argument based on two cases that have commonly been seen as the most likely candidates for security communities beyond Europe, the regions of South America and Southeast Asia.
Abstract: This article is concerned with groups of states that do not fight each other and, moreover, hold stable expectations that war between them is unlikely to occur in the future. Such no-war communities can be seen as a particular, minimalist form of the concept of international security communities as coined by Karl Deutsch and further developed by Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett. The security community literature has identified several potential communities across the globe but failed to offer a conclusive explanation for how these emerged because, as I shall argue, insufficient attention has been paid to the domestic conditions of state capacity. This article proposes an alternative path to community in which a lack of state capacity forms the common knowledge foundation between states. Under certain conditions, a low level of capacity to fight can assure states of their common desire to avoid war and gives rise to mutual recognition and toleration. I demonstrate the argument based on two cases that have commonly been seen as the most likely candidates for security communities beyond Europe, the regions of South America and Southeast Asia.
3 citations
DOI•
01 Jun 2015
TL;DR: The relationship between area studies and methodologies is a conundrum for others than for me as discussed by the authors, and the question of whether or not area studies generates a distinctive method or set of methods and research practices is not to say that the question should not be posed.
Abstract: The paper brings together several strands of debate and deliberation in which I have been involved since the early 2000s on the definition of Southeast Asia and the rationale of Southeast Asian Studies. I refer to the relationship between area studies and methodologies as a conundrum (or puzzle), though I should state from the outset that I think it is much more of a conundrum for others than for me. I have not felt the need to pose the question of whether or not area studies generates a distinctive method or set of methods and research practices, because I operate from a disciplinary perspective; though that it is not to say that the question should not be posed. Indeed, as I have earned a reputation for “revisionism” and championing disciplinary approaches rather than regional ones, it might be anticipated already the position that I take in an examination of the relationships between methodologies and the practice of “area studies” (and in this case Southeast Asian [or Asian] Studies). Nevertheless, given the recent resurgence of interest in the possibilities provided by the adoption of regional perspectives and the grounding of data gathering and analysis within specified locations in the context of globalization, the issues raised for researchers working in Southeast Asia and within the field of Southeast Asian Studies require revisiting.
2 citations
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors define and understand the concept of Southeast Asia from an interdisciplinary perspective and examine what countries such as Cambodia, the Philippines, East Timor and Myanmar have in common besides their geographical contiguity.
Abstract: This study aims to define and understand the concept of “Southeast Asia” from an interdisciplinary perspective. It examines what countries such as Cambodia, the Philippines, East Timor and Myanmar have in common besides their geographical contiguity. In our search for commonalities between the culturally and linguistically diverse inhabitants of this vast region, we stumble upon a prolonged but now-discredited tradition of academic neglect towards the “pre-civilised” elements of Southeast Asia. In the spirit of colonial hierarchic thinking, attention traditionally went to the civilisational powerhouses of China and India. Southeast Asia was often regarded as a cultural dependence of the latter, rendering the entire region as “Greater” or “Further India”. Eventually, the geopolitical developments of the Second World War and thereafter gave “Southeast Asia” its conceptual validity, while its analytical functionality remained poorly appreciated. Thereupon, this study puts forward arguments in support of the cultural interconnectedness of this region. It is argued that contact with outsiders ‐ first Indians, later Europeans and others ‐ triggered the conceptualisation of such notions as ethnicity and “Southeast Asianness”. Indeed, nonSoutheast Asians have played ‐ and continue to play ‐ key roles in the history of Southeast Asia; imperialistic rivalries and internal fragmentation have shaped the region into what it is now. Bearing this in mind, “Southeast Asia” remains a useful discursive tool for analysing both historical and contemporary issues in and beyond the region.
1 citations