Pandemic Politics And A Fairer Society In Southeast Asia

Employing the Malaysian case as a starting point for examining a wider trend in Southeast Asia, this book delves into how politicians and policymakers navigate political uncertainty and the impact of their decisions on creating and maintaining a fairer society.

COVID-19 has presented huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies, and people from all walks of life, but its impact has been highly variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. The crisis revealed existing contradictions and inequalities in society, compelling us to question what it means to return to “normal” and what insights can be gleaned from Southeast Asia for thinking about a post-pandemic world. In this regard, this edited volume collects the informed views of an ensemble of social scientists – area studies, development studies, and legal scholars; anthropologists, architects, economists, geographers, planners, sociologists, and urbanists; representing academic institutions, activist and charitable organisations, policy and research institutes, and areas of professional practice – who recognise the necessity of critical commentary and engaged scholarship. These contributions represent a wide-ranging set of views, collectively producing a compilation of reflections on the following three themes in particular: (1) Urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) Migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) Collective action, communities, and mutual action. Overall, this edited volume first aims to speak from a situated position in relevant debates to challenge knowledge about the pandemic that has assigned selective and inequitable visibility to issues, people, or places, or which through its inferential or interpretive capacity has worked to set social expectations or assign validity to certain interventions with a bearing on the pandemic’s course and the future it has foretold. Second, it aims to advance or renew understandings of social challenges, risks, or inequities that were already in place, and which, without further or better action, are to be features of our “post-pandemic world” as well. This volume also contributes to the ongoing efforts to de-centre and decolonise knowledge production. It endeavours to help secure a place within these debates for a region that was among the first outside of East Asia to be forced to contend with COVID-19 in a substantial way and which has evinced a marked and instructive diversity and dynamism in its fortunes.

Analysing the causes and effects of a variety of youth delinquent behaviours, both digital and conventional, this book aligns insightful sociological inquiry with an ongoing regional phenomenon.

If you are involved in academia, policy-making, or are simply curious about the complex features of internationalisation in the Global South, this work is your roadmap to deeper, more critical reflections on the internationalisation of higher education.

Exploring tailored family planning strategies for marginalized groups, this work delves into comparative insights from Asian contexts, providing actionable approaches to empower and transform communities, foster sustainable development and improve reproductive health outcomes.

Providing an in-depth, international perspective of women’s resilience, Gendered Perspectives of Restorative Justice, Violence and Resilience: An International Framework shines crucial visibility on a diverse, gendered lens of intervention, empowerment and understanding of violence and resilience.

Fusing the regional with the global, this book widens its perspective from a distinct, national moment to an international interdependency with the power to ripple across every corner of the globe.

Youth Development in South Africa: Harnessing the Demographic Dividend is a compelling snapshot of thirty years of South Africa’s democratic dispensation and what it has meant for the youth of the country, as well as how its demographic dividend can be harnessed for a fairer society in the future.