• 수완나부미
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.35-49
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• 2017

This paper will concentrate on how various particular Southeast Asian conditions created a distinct Southeast Asian cultural identity despite a very challenging geographical and historical diversity in the region. The paper will argue that Southeast Asians demonstrate an ability to adapt to changes and new values but also exhibit fatalism through a very high degree of passive acceptance to political and other changes that affect their society. The paper identifies a degree of environmental and geographical uniqueness in Southeast Asia that shapes context and gives rise to very distinct cultural traits. The historical transformation in the region brought about by colonialism and nationalism, combined with this geographical and political make-up of the region, had an immense impact on Southeast Asian society as it fostered adaptability. Finally, the political transitions brought about by various conflicts and wars that continued to affect the area in rapid succession all throughout the 20^th century likewise contributed immensely to a local Southeast Asian fatalistic response towards change. Historically, Southeast Asia demonstrated these socio-cultural responses to such an extent that these are argued to permeate the region forming a distinct aspect of Southeast Asian culture.

• 수완나부미
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.17-53
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• 2016

Debates continue to multiply on the definition and rationale of Southeast Asia as a region and on the utility of the multidisciplinary field of area studies. However, we have now entered a post-colonialist, post-Orientalist, post-structuralist stage of reflection and re-orientation in the era of globalization, and a strong tendency on the part of insiders to pose these issues in terms of an insider-outsider dichotomy. On the one hand, the study of Southeast Asia for researchers from outside the region has become fragmented. This is for very obvious reasons: the strengthening and re-energizing of academic disciplines, the increasing popularity of other non-regional multidisciplinary studies, and the entry of globalization studies into our field of vision. On the other hand, how has the local Southeast Asian academy addressed these major issues of change in conceptualizing the region from an insider perspective? In filling in and giving substance to an outsider, primarily Euro-American-Australian-centric definition and vision of Southeast Asia, some local academics have recently been inclined to construct Southeast Asia in terms of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): a nation-state-based, institutional definition of what a region comprises. Others continue to operate at a localized level exploring small-scale communities and territories, while a modest number focus on sub-regional issues (the Malay-Indonesian world or the Mekong sub-region are examples). However, further reflections suggest that the Euro-American-Australian hegemony is a thing of the past and the ground has shifted to a much greater emphasis on academic activity within the region. Southeast Asia-based academics are also finding it much more important to network within the region and to capture, understand, and analyze what Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scholars are saying about Southeast Asia, its present circumstances and trajectories, and their increasingly close involvement with the region within a greater Asia-Pacific rim. The paper argues that the insider-outsider dichotomy requires considerable qualification. It is a neat way of dramatizing the aftermath of colonialism and Orientalism and of reasserting local priorities, agendas, and interests. But there might be a way forward in resolving at least some of these apparently opposed positions with recourse to the concepts of culture and identity in order to address Southeast Asian diversities, movements, encounters, hybridization, and hierarchies.

• 수완나부미
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.57-85
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• 2018

The debates continue on the conceptualization of Southeast Asia and the ways in which those of us who are concerned to attempt scholarly interventions in the region define, conceive, understand and engage with it. But, in an important sense, the region has now been defined for us by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and whatever academic researchers might wish to impose on Southeast Asia in regard to their priorities and interests, it may make little difference. Given the politically-derived, nation-state definition of Southeast Asia, are all our problems of regional definition resolved? In some respects, they have been. ASEAN has constructed and institutionalized a regional organization and an associated regional culture. But in certain fields of research we still require academic flexibility. We cannot always be confined by an ASEAN-derived regional definition. The paper will explore other configurations of 'region' and its sub-divisions and propose, that in the spirit of academic freedom, we can continue to generate imaginative depictions of Southeast Asia and its constituents both within and beyond the region.

• 수완나부미
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.121-146
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• 2016

Defining key characteristics of Southeast Asia requires historical interpretation. Southeast Asia is a diverse and complicated region, but some of modern history's "grand narratives" serve to unify its historical experience. At a minimum, the modern history of the region involves decisive encounters with universal religions, the rise of Western colonialism, the experience of world wars, decolonization, and the end of the "cycle of violence". The ability of the region's peoples to adapt to these many challenges and successfully build new nations is a defining feature of Southeast Asia's place in the global stage. This paper will begin with a question: is it possible to develop a hermeneutic of "expedience" as a way to interpret the region's history? That is, rather than regard the region from a purely Western, nationalist, "internalist" point of view, it would be useful to identify a new series of interpretative contexts from which to begin scholarly analysis. In order to contextualize this discussion, the paper will draw upon the writings of figures who explored the region before knowledge about it was shaped by purely colonist or nationalist enterprises. To this end, particular attention will be devoted to exploring some of John Furnivall's ways of conceptualizing Southeast Asia. Investigating Furnivall, a critic of colonialism, will be done in relation to his historical situation. Because Furnivall's ideas have played a pivotal role in the interpretation of Southeast Asia, the paper will highlight the intellectual history of the region in order to ascertain the value of these concepts for subsequent historical interpretation. Ultimately, the task of interpreting the region's history requires a framework which will move beyond the essentializing orientalist categories produced by colonial scholarship and the reactionary nation-building narratives which followed. Instead, by beginning with a mode of historical interpretation that focuses on the many realities of expedience which have been necessary for the region's peoples, it may be possible to write a history which highlights the extraordinarily adaptive quality of Southeast Asia's populations, cultures, and nations. To tell this story, which would at once highlight key characteristics of the region while showing how they developed through historical encounters, would go a long way to capturing Southeast Asia's contribution's to global development.

• 수완나부미
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.53-80
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• 2020

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 manner 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 present 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 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?

• 수완나부미
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.71-100
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• 2019

The region between mainland China on the east and the Indian sub-continent on the west is referred to as Southeast Asia since the conclusion of the Pacific War (1941-1945). As a region, Southeast Asia appears as a hodgepodge of disparity and diversity, but a closer scrutiny reveals numerous common attributes and characteristics. This study attempts to identify and examine the cohesive and shared characteristics across the Southeast Asian region from a historical and sociocultural perspective. The intention is to differentiate an identity borne of the underlying commonalities of shared characteristics whether physical, experiential, emotive, and/or in terms of heritage. Subsequently, Southeast Asia has more grounds to claim itself as a distinct region, and an "area of study," besides the political expediency of ASEAN.

• 수완나부미
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.143-153
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• 2018

The paper comments on the contribution of Oscar Salemink on his personal intellectual journal from Vietnam to Europe and back again. This then leads to the contemplation of the construction of Southeast Asia as a "place" or "locality", early preoccupations within the region of the national dimension. And more recent developments in universities in Singapore, examining the continuing perceptions of Southeast Asia as a region and Singapore as its "gateway", and the increasing interest in "connectivities" and transnational relations between the region and other parts of Asia and the wider world.

• 수완나부미
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.19-52
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• 2020

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.

• 수완나부미
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.81-118
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• 2020

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.

• 수완나부미
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.13-38
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• 2024

The present paper intends to explain the probable reasons and practical circumstances for the paucity of local scholars in the region in attaining international recognition as Southeast Asianists. Far from being an apologetic piece, on the contrary, our goal is to first ascertain the causal factors for the lacuna, and in turn, to propose hopeful and realistic panaceas in resolving and overcoming the dire situation. Why? The rationale and advantageous factors in nurturing Southeast Asians as Southeast Asianist follow in the later part of the paper.