Call for Papers | Southeast Asian Studies in Asia Conference 2015

Building on the imperative to promote region-based Southeast Asian Studies, the Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies in Asia (SEASIA, pronounced ‘see-Asia’) is organizing a “Southeast Asian Studies in Asia” Conference to be held in Kyoto, Japan, on December 12-13, 2015. The conference is an attempt at exploring new directions in re-contextualizing and re-conceptualizing Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian Studies, particularly the legacy and transition of such studies after the Cold War period. This conference, a major activity of the Consortium, will be the first of the biennial meetings that will be organized in the region over the coming years.

SEASIA 2015 welcomes panel proposals dealing with the following themes:

Southeast Asian Studies in Asia
Coordinator: Sunait Chutintaranond

Southeast Asian Studies, as an interdisciplinary field of area studies, emerged right after the decolonization period following the Second World War, and gradually developed throughout the Cold War period. However, after the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1990 and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, area studies came under attack from several directions. Some critics charged that “area specialists focused so intently on their own regions that they lost sight of the comparative and global context of regional experiences” (Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal and Anand A. Yang, eds., Interactions: Transregional Perspectives on World History [Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005], p. 1). The decline of area studies has been, without doubt, the beginning of the end of Southeast Asian Studies in the United States.

After the end of the Cold War era, Southeast Asia, as a highly dynamic region, entered a new phase of history. The situation that followed this turning point has been as crucial as the period when the colonial powers withdrew from the region almost seven decades ago – present-day Southeast Asia is facing a radical transformation.

The point that needs to be emphasized in this respect is that the factors with which Southeast Asian Studies scholars used to be familiar are no longer felicitous for modern-day Southeast Asia. The next phase of these studies is in the hands of Asia-based scholars who directly or indirectly have to live in and with the new world of Southeast Asia. It is, as a result, inescapable for Southeast Asianists, in particular, and Asianists, in general, to explore new directions in reconceptualizing and recontextualizing Southeast Asia. Issue-based studies, trans-regional approaches, comparative perspectives, the integration of natural sciences and social sciences and humanities, the study of local dynamism in both regional and global contexts are some of the possible directions and academic frameworks for the present day and the future of Southeast Asian Studies. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

1. From Southeast Asian Studies to ASEAN studies: Old Body in the New Socio-Political Frontier

2. Southeast Asian Studies in the Global Age

3. When Northeast Asia Meets Southeast Asia: Assessing Southeast Asian Studies in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan  4. Civilizational and Inter-regional Dialogues and Connections

5. Training the Next Generation of Scholars of Southeast Asia

6. Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies

Law, Politics, and the Regional Order
Coordinator: Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao

Southeast Asia has experienced great economic, social and political transformations in the past three decades since 1980s. Among all, the emerging democratization, changing social class structure, rise of civil society, shifting nationalism and identity politics, ethnicity and religious cleavages, and the prospect of ASEAN regional community are the most noticeable ones. This sub-theme welcomes submissions of proposals of panels and papers from concerned scholars on the following potential topics (as well as other topics):

1.    Democratization and New Democracies in Southeast Asia

2.    Middle Classes in Southeast Asia

3.    Civil Society and Participatory Politics

4.    New Nationalisms and Localisms

5.    Post-Cold War Southeast Asia 

6.    ASEAN Community

7.    Region-Making, Regionalization, Regionalism 

8.    Politics and Governance in Southeast Asian States

9.    The Monarchy in Southeast Asia

10.    Legal Change, Media, and Political Transformation in Southeast Asia

11.    Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia   

Environment and Society
Coordinator: Kono Yasuyuki

Sustainability of the earth- and eco-systems is a non-violable prerequisite for the sustainability of human society. This principle has emerged as a practical and even crucial issue through the drastic innovations of science and technology and consequent expansions of human activities during the last century. Southeast Asia is one of the hot spots of the contemporary world in this context. Its dynamic and rich natural environments are a source of both potentiality and vulnerability. We have diverse and rich resources, including land, water, biomass, food and energy, owing in large part to what nature has given the region. At the same time, we frequently suffer from natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, floods and typhoons. Frequent epidemics of cholera, malaria and dengue fever, among others, also afflict the region. The rich endowments of nature and the frequent nature-originated disasters are in fact two sides of the same coin, and coexisting with this coin is the unique scenario for Southeast Asia to strengthen its sustainability. This conference aims at sharing existing problems and potential risks in human nature interactions, examining possible solutions and necessary elaboration of technology and institutions for this, and framing interdisciplinary studies on Southeast Asian environment and society. We welcome proposals that explore, but are not limited, to: 

1.    Environmental Threats and Strategies of Sustainability 

2.    Human-nature Interactions (including non-anthropocentric approaches)

3.    Environment and Diversity

4.    Land and Resource Use and Contestation

5.    Innovation, Science and Society  

Development and Its (Dis?)Contents
Coordinator: R. Michael Feener

Southeast Asia has been a site of intense activity involving trans-national agents and local actors in diverse projects for economic and social development for decades. These dynamics have significantly framed and complicated local experiences and understandings of political reform, social welfare, consumerism, income inequality, regional integration, and globalization.   ‘Development’ in Southeast Asia takes myriad forms as both particular programs, and as broader economic and political ideologies. Development projects have had complex social effects not only in the spheres of state policy, economic indicators, institutional programs, and electoral politics - but also in areas of everyday experience including religion, culture, and family life in modern Southeast Asia. This sub-theme of the conference will explore these diverse dimensions of development, bringing together scholars working from a range of disciplines in order to better understand the ways in which development both takes shape in, and also further reshapes, communities across the region. We welcome proposals on the following and other topics:

1.    Religion and Development

2.    Politics of Development/Political Development

3.    Development and Human Rights in Southeast Asia

4.    The Greater Mekong Subregion

5.    Southeast Asian Economy

6.    Cities and Development in Southeast Asia  

Mobilities, Connections, Exchanges
Coordinator: Liu Hong 

While historically, intra- and extra-regional exchanges had always been an important part of life in Southeast Asia, modern technological advances and ease of transportation mean that, more than ever, the lived experiences of ordinary Southeast Asians are affected by migration, transnational cultural flows, travel of ideas, and socio-economic forces that originate from far beyond their immediate locales. For example, transnational labor movements in the form of domestic workers now form a significant part of export ‘commodity’ for countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Remittances and the transfer of capital to and from countries in Southeast Asia and beyond are both common and crucial for many domestic economies. Similarly, new ways of communicating also mean that local and national forms of identifications have become more complex and thus need to be reconceptualized beyond their traditional frameworks, including the very conceptualization of Southeast Asia. For scholars, this heightened transnational interconnectivity opens up many exciting yet challenging avenues for applied, empirical, and theoretical research. This sub-theme aims to deepen and advance current conceptual work on transnationalism, migration, networks, interconnectivity, and mobilities in the Southeast Asian region. As such, it calls for multi-disciplinary panels and paper submissions that discuss recent trends and developments relevant, but not limited, to the following topics: 

1.    Histories of transnational and intra-regional connections in Southeast Asia

2.    Border-crossings and shared spaces (social, economic, cultural…)

3.    Mobility and connectivity: changing dynamics and evolving configurations

4.    Transnational cultural flows

5.    Cosmopolitanisms and their many faces

6.    Travels of ideas and new forms of socio-political governance

7.    New approaches to transnationalism, diaspora and identity studies

8.    Remittances and transnational/local economies

9.    Labour movements

10.    Intra-regional and inter-regional migrations 

11.    Network, market, and the state

12.    Southeast Asia and its elastic neighbours (China, India, Japan…)   

Change and Resistance in Rural Southeast Asia
Coordinator: Eduardo C. Tadem

From a region that was once predominantly agrarian in production mode and peasant-based in social composition, Southeast Asia has undergone radical changes. In the seventies’, 80 percent of Southeast Asians lived in rural areas; in 2010, this share was reduced to less than 60 percent. In seven of ten ASEAN countries, agriculture’s contribution to the gross domestic product is now less than 20 percent. Investments in the rural areas, however, have been growing, fuelled by a global demand for cash crops, biofuels, minerals, housing, industrial processing, and entertainment venues. At the same time, smallholder and family farms, as the backbone of sustainable production, have been continually under assault by these same investment patterns; a process that has been described as a modern form of “land grabbing.”

A 2011 ASEAN study on poverty notes that in Southeast Asia, “agriculture received less public investments, with weak domestic markets, poor rural infrastructure, inaccessible financial services, inadequate agricultural extension services and deteriorating natural resource base ...”  A UN IFAD 2011 report notes that 70 percent of  SEAsia’s poor live in the rural areas where poverty incidence is 62 percent. It is in this context that agrarian social movements and growing incidences of rural resistance have become prominent. Radical changes have been accompanied by popular resistance.

Possible topics under this theme may include (but are not limited to):

1. Whither agrarian reform?

2. Special Economic Zones and the peasantry 

3. Biotechnology and agricultural sustainability

4. Food security or food sovereignty?

5. Agrarian social movements and rural resistances

6. Land grabs - food, biofuels and mining

7. Indigenous communities and development

8. Urban expansion into the countryside

9. Is the peasantry disappearing?

New Approaches to the History and Culture of Southeast Asia
Coordinator: Tong Chee-Kiong

The initial interest in the study of the Southeast Asian region was primarily undertaken by historians, linguists, anthropologists, and political scientists. As such there is a large body of works covering these topics, and Southeast Asian studies have made considerable contributions in the comparative study of history, linguistics, and culture.  In recent years, with the South China Seas issues, there is a renewed interest in the history and cultures of Southeast Asia, even among politicians, journalists and security specialists. This Sub-theme on the new approaches to the histories and cultures of Southeast Asia invites panel submissions as well as individual presentations from specialists in the humanities and social sciences in the following broad areas:

1.    Rethinking Southeast Asian Histories

2.    Language, Linguistics and Language management in Southeast Asia

3.    Visual Arts, Performance, Pop culture and Material Culture in Southeast Asia

4.    Cultural Dynamics, Cultural Policies, and Cultural Change in Southeast Asia

5.    Beliefs, Religion, Society and Everyday Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia

6.    Identity, Ethnicity and Cultural Diversities in Southeast Asia

These broad rubrics provide the framework by which scholars can submit proposals for panels on specific topics and research interests. These should include a title as well as an abstract of the panel session. In addition, academics can submit individual titles which will be slotted into the panels. Some examples of panels that have been submitted include:

a.    Malay Language and Culture: Dominance, Challenge and Future Directions

b.    The Monarchy in Southeast Asia: Past, Present and Future

c.    Mobility in Southeast Asian Societies

d.    Ethnic Relations and Responding Policies in Southeast Asia

e.    Gender and Sexuality: Diversity and Coexistence

f.    Diversities in Life and Livelihood

SEASIA 2015 strongly encourages panel organizers to bring together thematically cohesive papers dealing with more than one country to promote comparative, historical, contemporary, regional, and transnational perspectives.   

The Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies in Asia brings together the leading area studies institutions in the region in a cooperative venture to provide a multilateral forum for organizing academic meetings, seminars, workshops, and symposia. SEASIA aims to promote research collaboration and networking, operate as a system for sharing information, and offer opportunities for education and training of young and up-and-coming scholars. It also seeks to connect institutions specializing in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities whose scholars have an interest in, and who work on or in Southeast Asia, but do not necessarily consider themselves area studies specialists.  

SEASIA was founded on October 11, 2013, with ten institutions signing its Charter: Center for Asia-Pacific Studies, Academia Sinica; the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University; the Indonesian Institute of Sciences; the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies; the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University; the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore; the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University; the Taiwan Association of Southeast Asian Studies; the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam; and the Asian Center, University of the Philippines. Professor Sunait Chutintaranond of Chulalongkorn University is Chairperson of the Governing Board. The Secretariat is based in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University. 

Deadline for panel proposals is July 15, 2014.
Please send inquiries and applications to the  SEASIA 2015 Secretariat at seasia2015@cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

You can download the application form here.