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open access
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ISSN : 2092-738X
Southeast Asianists have a perennial tendency to question the reality of the region in which they are specialized. Yet while scholars have doubted, Southeast Asians at large have become increasingly sure that Southeast Asia does exist, and increasingly inclined to identify with it. This article summarizes a range of evidence to that effect, from opinion poll research and from the history of ASEAN and other pan-Southeast Asian institutions, and uses it to construct a critique of the relativistic view that Southeast Asia is a fluid and ill-defined concept. Southeast Asians today tend to see Southeast Asia as a cultural as well as a geographical and institutional unit. The nature of the perceived cultural unity remains unclear, and further research is called for in this area. There are reasons to think, however, that it reflects real inheritances from a shared past, as well as shared aspirations for the future.
Students of global development are often introduced to Southeast Asia by reading many of the influential authors whose ideas were derived from their experiences in the region. John Furnivall, Clifford Geertz, Benedict Anderson and James Scott have made Southeast Asia relevant to comprehending developments far beyond the region. It might even be added that others come to the region because it has also been the home to many key historical events and seminal social developments. However, when many of the best-known writings (and textbooks) of global history are examined, treatment of Southeast Asia is often scarce and in the worst cases non-existent. It is within this context that this paper will examine Southeast Asia’s role in the interpretation of global history. The paper will consider the ‘global history’ as a historical production in order to depict the ways in which the construction of global narratives can be a reflection of the immediate needs of historians. Furthermore, the discussion will be historiographic, exhibiting the ways in which key global histories portrayed the significance of the region. Particular importance will be placed on the ways in which the region is used to exhibit larger historical trajectories. Additionally, the paper will consider instances when Southeast Asia is either profoundly underrepresented in global narratives or misrepresented by global historians. Last, since the discussion will probe the nature of ‘global history’, it will also consider what the subject might look like from a Southeast Asian point of view. The paper will end by exploring the ways in which the region’s history might be augmented to become visible to those who live outside or have little knowledge about it. Visual augmented reality offers great potential in many areas of education, training and heritage preservation. To draw upon augmented reality as a basic or “root metaphor” for enquiry (and methodology) means asking a different kind of question: how can a region be “augmented” to become (at least in this case) more prominent. That is, how can the region’s nations, histories and cultures become augmented so that they can become the center of historical global narratives in their own right. Or, to put this in more familiar terms, how can the “autonomous voices” associated with the region make themselves heard?
Despite its centrality at a pivotal crossroads of both land and sea of East-West trade, communications and travel, the region now known as Southeast Asia provides very few scholarly works situating or featuring it in an international context. Because of this paucity, there is immense scope for exploration. But prior to further explorations, justification is needed to establish that Southeast Asia, as a region, is a subject of interest, relevance, and significance in a global context. Southeast Asia was home to several empires whose reach transcended the region and beyond. Southeast Asia in, and as part of international history as an area of study is therefore justifiable. Moreover, other factors come into play, viz. geography, resources, migration, diffusion of ideas and beliefs from without and accommodation from within, shared experience of imperialism and colonialism, decolonization, and the Cold War, and the collective fate under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), that further bolster its rationalization as a component of international history. Explorations, on the other hand, examine issues and obstacles that contribute to the paucity of works on Southeast Asia in international history. Furthermore, in contextualizing Southeast Asia in international history, there might appear challenges that need to be identified, confronted, and resolved.
Emerging from Portuguese colonialism and Indonesian occupation to become one of the newest states, Timor-Leste is an interesting example of modern nation-building. Geographically, Timor-Leste is located in the area covered by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In such context, Timor-Leste has a strong claim to belonging to Southeast Asia. Timor-Leste nevertheless has not yet been admitted formally as a member despite its application for membership in March 2011. This paper locates Timor-Leste in a broader context of their construction of regional identity and as part of Southeast Asia. Drawing upon the constructivist approach, this paper suggests that the complexity of Timor-Leste’s regional affiliation with ASEAN is made more challenging with its quest to assert itself as a nation-in-the-making.
How might historians secure for the river a larger berth in the recent macro-historical turn? This question cannot find a greater niche than in the emerging critique of the existing spatial configuration of regionalism in mainland Southeastern Asia. The Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong and Yangtze rivers spread out like a necklace around Yunnan and cut across parts of the territories that are known as South, Southeast and East Asia. Each of these rivers has a different topography and fluvial itinerary, giving rise to different political, economic and cultural trajectories. Yet these rivers together form a connected “water-world”. These rivers engendered conversations between multi-agentive mobility and large-scale place-making and were at the heart of inter-Asian engagements and integration until the formal end of the European empires in the 1950s. Being both a subject and a sponsor of transregional crossings, the paper argues, these rivers point to the need for a new historical approach that registers the connections between parts of the Southeast Asian massif through to the expansive plain land and the vast coastal rim of the Bay of Bengal and the China Seas. A connection that could be framed through the concept of Holon.
This paper explores critically and historically some of the popular academic views concerning the development of the study of Southeast Asia through the lens of the contributions of particular scholars and institutions. Within the broad field of Southeast Asian Studies the focus is on the disciplines of geography, history and ethnology. There are certain views concerning the development of scholarship on Southeast Asia which continue to surface and have acquired, or are in the process of acquiring “mythical” status. Among the most enduring is the claim that the region is a post-Second World War construction primarily arising from Western politico-strategic and economic preoccupations. More specifically, it is said that Southeast Asian Studies for a considerable period of time has been subject to the American domination of this field of scholarship, located in programs of study in such institutions as Cornell, Yale and California, Berkeley, and, within those institutions, focused on particular scholars who have exerted considerable influence on the directions which research has taken. Another is that, based on the model or template of Southeast Asian Studies (and other area studies projects) developed primarily in the USA, it has distinctive characteristics as a scholarly enterprise in that it is multidisciplinary, requires command of the vernacular, and assigns special importance to what has been termed ‘groundedness’ and historical, geographical and cultural contextualization; in other words, a Southeast Asian Studies approach as distinct from disciplinary-based studies addresses local concerns, interests, perspectives and priorities through in-depth, on-the-ground, engaged scholarship. Finally, views have emerged that argue that a truly Southeast Asian Studies project can only be achieved if it is based on a set of locally-generated concepts, methods and approaches to replace Western ethnocentrism and intellectual hegemony.
The term Anthropocene encapsulates the idea that the human impact on earth has already reached the level of a geological force with catastrophic consequences, such as global warming or climate change. The envisioning of an apocalyptic future of the possible demise of the human race is central to this idea. This paper seeks to explore the implications of the Anthropocene on the very idea of area studies. Does the planetary scope of the Anthropocenic condition, and the concerted effort in the global scale in the need to address it, mean the end of area studies, which is premised on a particularity of an area? Is a posthumanist history feasible? If yes, how can it really help address the problem? Or, it will merely muddle the issues?
Area Studies, by definition, conjure ideas of emplaced knowledge; in-depth interdisciplinary understanding of language, history, culture and politics of a nation or region. Where detractors might see this approach as overly empirical, therefore precluding theoretical sophistication, others argue that “places” are either artificially constructed, or that processes of globalisation have obliterated the cultural zone. But what if we turn an ethnographic eye to those very processes and technologies themselves? Can Area Studies take to the air, and if so, what are the attendant challenges and benefits? Based on insights from ethnography amongst airline customer service workers, ground and cabin crews in Thailand and Myanmar, this research examines the airline cabin as a field for ethnographic study, and as an emplaced site for political and cultural processes. With participant observation-based knowledge of Southeast Asian cabin crews, this paper examines the 1990 hijack of Thai Airways TG 305 from an emplaced cultural perspective.