An Introduction To Southeast Asian Studies

This collection of essays explores the evolution of various disciplinary approaches to Southeast Asia. Considering anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, history, politics, international relations and literature, the authors examine many of the crucial debates and controversies of the past.

This book addresses the question of how to ground research practice in area-specific, yet globally entangled contexts such as 'Global Southeast Asia'. It offers a fruitful debate between various approaches to Southeast Asia Studies, while taking into consideration the area-specific contexts of research practice cross-cutting methodological issues.

Straddling the equator, Southeast Asia comprises Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines, as well as Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, and East Timor. Despite its extraordinary diversity of ethnicities, religions, and political systems, Southeast Asia plays a keyrole in global economies and geopolitics, especially in light of its strategic position bordering China and India. This Very Short Introduction explores the contemporary character of Southeast Asia's national societies through the lens of their historical evolution, from the eras of indigenouskingdoms and colonies under Western rule to the present's independent nation states. Deftly combining historical analysis and geopolitical insights, the book paints a bird's eye view of contemporary Southeast Asia as a community of diverse societies and traditions as well as a politicaltheater-of-action nested between India and China and tangled in global economic traffic patterns, balance of powers, and environmental forces.As James R. Rush explains, archaic structures, such as religious and ethnic rivalries, tenacious feudal hierarchies, and age-old trade and migration patterns, remain rooted in today's Southeast Asia beneath the surface of modern national governments. The book draws on a wide range of examples fromthe major nations, including the ethno-religious violence in Myanmar, the Muslim-led rebellion in the southern Philippines, the Thai-Cambodian territorial rivalries, the Confucian-inspired governance in Singapore, the military rule and democratization in Indonesia, the environmental consequences ofagribusiness, mining, and unchecked urbanization, and the big-power alignments and tensions involving the United States, China, and Japan. By delving into the cultural, political, and geographical background of Southeast Asia, Rush shows that Southeast Asia is unquestionably modern, but it is modernin distinctively Southeast Asian ways.

This admirable book contains fascinating autobiographical accounts, by some of Southeast Asia's most eminent scholars, concerning their struggle to find their own voices in interpreting the region to which they belong. The book should be indispensable to anyone interested in thinking about knowledge production and its politics in a postcolonial world. In the views of these scholarly Southeast Asians, we are made to see, in very personal terms, the link between the global crisis in the social sciences and the need to find remedies for it that are neither Eurocentric nor parochially anti-Western. Professor Alexander Woodside Professor of Chinese and Southeast Asian History University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. This book marks the shift of the centre of Southeast Asian Studies from the West to Southeast Asia. The insights provided by the authors are not simply explanations of colonial and postcolonial experiences of major Southeast Asian scholars. Rather, the book provides a unique set of intellectual genealogies that show that distinctions between humanities and social sciences are less important than the development of distinctive local and regional traditions and practices of scholarship. Goh Beng-Lans introduction frames the collection through her subtle deconstruction of international discourses on Southeast Asia. This introduction then allows the reader to view the different generations of Southeast Asian scholars in their social, political, and academic contexts. The end result is a combined view of the state of the art of Southeast Asian Studies, a view that is greater than the sum of its national parts. Professor Adrian Vickers Chair of Southeast Asian Studies University of Sydney and Director, Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology The collection represents a coming of age of scholars from Southeast Asia. What we hear is not bluster that comes from a wounded pride or doctrinal certainties, but a quiet confidence that acknowledges the multiple currents in which their scholarship has been formed, and a willingness to engage the perspective of the other, both within and without. The reflexivity in this volume sets the stage for scholars from the region to develop perspectives and concepts to address the challenges of the new configuration of the Asia being ushered in by ASEAN. Professor Prasenjit Duara Raffles Professor of Humanities and Director of Research Humanities and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore

"What is the relevance of the area studies approach to Southeast Asia?" The current state and future directions of area studies, of which Southeast Asian studies are a part, is a central question not only to scientists working in the field but also those engaged in university politics. This collection of nine articles is written by specialists from different disciplinary backgrounds and working in institutions of higher learning all around the world. It provides an up-to-date insight into the current state of the study field, its strengths and weaknesses and seeks ways to reconfigure Southeast Asian studies in order to meet the challenges of a region that is caught up in profound transformation as a consequence of both globalization and localization.

"At a time when Southeast Asian Studies is declining in North America and Europe, this book serves to remind us of the fresh, constructive and encouraging view of the field from Asia. On behalf of Taiwan’s Southeast Asian research community, I sincerely congratulate Professors Park and King for making such a great and timely contribution to the making of Southeast Asian Studies in Asia." Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Director of Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, and former President of Taiwan Association of Southeast Asian Studies "The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies: Korea and Beyond is an important and long-overdue step in the task of bringing Southeast Asian Studies to where it rightfully belongs - the Asian region. At the same time, it avoids being narrowly regionalistic and instead views Southeast Asia as an 'open system' that transcends 'national units' or 'fixed territorial categories' and welcomes the contributions of both Asian and non-Asian scholars in crafting a fresh post-colonial approach to the study of the region’s societies and peoples." - Eduardo Climaco Tadem, Professor of Asian Studies, University of the Philippines-Diliman “An insightful and systemic analysis of the intriguing trajectories, evolving themes, and multi-lingual scholarship of Southeast Asian Studies in Asia and beyond, this book serves as an important foundation in setting future research agendas as well as for closer global collaborations in knowledge production in Asian Studies.” -Liu Hong, Tan Kah Kee Professor and Chair, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

This book takes stock of the results of some two decades of intensive archaeological research carried out on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, in combination with renewed approaches to textual sources and to art history. To improve our understanding of the trans-cultural process commonly referred to as Indianisation, it brings together specialists of both India and Southeast Asia, in a fertile inter-disciplinary confrontation. Most of the essays reappraise the millennium-long historiographic no-man's land during which exchanges between the two shores of the Bay of Bengal led, among other processes, to the Indianisation of those parts of the region that straddled the main routes of exchange. Some essays follow up these processes into better known "classical" times or even into modern times, showing that the localisation process of Indian themes has long remained at work, allowing local societies to produce their own social space and express their own ethos.

We live in a world populated not just by individuals but by figures, those larger-than-life people who in some way express and challenge our conventional understandings of social types. This innovative and collaborative work takes up the wide range of figures that populate the social and cultural imaginaries of contemporary Southeast Asia—some familiar only in specific places, others recognizable across the region and even globally. It puts forward a series of ethnographic portraits of figures that represent and give voice to something larger than themselves, offering a view into social life that is at once highly particular and general. They include the Muslim Television Preacher in Indonesia, Miss Beer Lao, the Rural DJ in Thailand, the Korean Soap Opera Junkie in Burma, the Filipino Seaman, and the Photo Retoucher in Vietnam. Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity brings together the fieldwork of over eighty scholars and covers the nine major countries of the region: Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. An introduction outlines important social transformations in Southeast Asia and key theoretical and methodological innovations that result from ethnographic attention to the study of key figures. Each section begins with an introduction by a country editor followed by short essays offering vivid and intimate portraits set against the background of contemporary Southeast Asia. The result is a volume that combines scholarly rigor with a meaningful, up-to-date portrayal of a region of the world undergoing rapid change. A reference bibliography offers suggestions for further reading. Figures of Southeast Asia Modernity is an ideal teaching tool for introductory classes to Southeast Asia studies, anthropology, and geography.