- Presentation
Roundtable on Reshaping Southeast Asian Studies
Report of:
Date:
Monday, 3 November 2014 to Tuesday, 4 November 2014
Venue:
Lyons Institute of East Asian Studies (IAO-CNRS)
15 Parvis René Descartes
Lyon
France
See map: Google Maps
FR
IIAS-Mellon Foundation workshop "Communities in Between: Redefining Social Spaces in Southeast Asian Borderlands“
What are the challenges?
- East and South Asian vectors of globalization seem to enhance the need for understanding the sources of investment, ideas, and people from Japan, China, India
- But globalization of Southeast Asia seems to reduce need for Southeast Asian studies…
- … because the assumption is that globalization changes SEAsia rather than that SEAsia changes the world
Area studies and states
- ”Area studies” are geographically bounded…
- … just like nation-states
- Ulrich Beck: replace methodological nationalism (and individualism) with methodological cosmopolitanism in globalizing world
- We must question naturalization of nations, states, areas/regions by problematizing borders and boundaries…
- … even as states operate as vehicles and contexts for markets and globalization
Possible lines of discussion
- Borderlands have usually been depicted as spaces of despair (compulsion); when and how did such spaces become spaces of hope (opportunity), and how do hope and despair articulate?
- Is the ”agrarian transition” happening now different in scale or in nature from previous transformations?
- What are the effects of ”centering the margins” on the (state-market-knowledge) centers themselves?
- What are the roles of intermediary ethnic and religious categories in bridging borders, classes?
