Making Southeast Asia Visible: Restoring the Region to Global History

Keck, Stephen L. Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies 2020 Suvannabhumi Vol.12 No.2

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?

Between Orientalism and Ornamentalism: Colonial Perceptions of Southeast Asian Rulers: 1850-1914

( Stephen Keck ) 부산외국어대학교 동남아지역원 2018 Suvannabhumi Vol.10 No.1

Finding distinguishing characteristics of Southeast Asia has proven to be a significant challenge: by focusing on the encounters which primarily colonial British writers had with the region’s state rulers, it becomes possible to recover the early conceptualizations of regional governance. The writings of Henry Yule, Anna Leonowens, Sir George Scott, and Hugh Clifford all document the “orientalist” features of Western discourses because these writers at once were affected by it as they contributed to it. The discourse about royalty and rulers was central to many of the tropes associated with orientalism, but also with ‘ornamentalism’. David Cannadine has shown that ornamentalism (in which British conceptualized many imperial practices in relation to their own hierarchical conceptions of society) was as critical a feature of imperial outlook as was orientalism. The need to understand ruling elites was at the heart of the imperialist project. Tracing the ways in which colonizing powers represented the region’s ruling elite offers a new avenue for recognizing the affinities of the regional experience. Beyond orientalism, the paper explores questions about the representation and presentation of authority. Understanding the conceptualizations of rulers is connected to the comprehension of social organization―including representations of “traditional society.”

Taking Expedience Seriously: Reinterpreting Furnivall`s Southeast Asia

( Stephen Keck ) 부산외국어대학교 동남아지역원 2016 Suvannabhumi Vol.8 No.1

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.

Introducing SEABOT: Methodological Quests in Southeast Asian Studies

( Stephen Keck ) 부산외국어대학교 동남아지역원 2018 Suvannabhumi Vol.10 No.2

How to study Southeast Asia (SEA)? The need to explore and identify methodologies for studying SEA are inherent in its multifaceted subject matter. At a minimum, the region’s rich cultural diversity inhibits both the articulation of decisive defining characteristics and the training of scholars who can write with confidence beyond their specialisms. Consequently, the challenges of understanding the region remain and a consensus regarding the most effective approaches to studying its history, identity and future seem quite unlikely. Furthermore, “Area Studies” more generally, has proved to be a less attractive frame of reference for burgeoning scholarly trends. This paper will propose a new tool to help address these challenges. Even though the science of artificial intelligence (AI) is in its infancy, it has already yielded new approaches to many commercial, scientific and humanistic questions. At this point, AI has been used to produce news, generate better smart phones, deliver more entertainment choices, analyze earthquakes and write fiction. The time has come to explore the possibility that AI can be put at the service of the study of SEA. The paper intends to lay out what would be required to develop SEABOT. This instrument might exist as a robot on the web which might be called upon to make the study of SEA both broader and more comprehensive. The discussion will explore the financial resources, ownership and timeline needed to make SEABOT go from an idea to a reality. SEABOT would draw upon artificial neural networks (ANNs) to mine the region’s “Big Data”, while synthesizing the information to form new and useful perspectives on SEA. Overcoming significant language issues, applying multidisciplinary methods and drawing upon new yields of information should produce new questions and ways to conceptualize SEA. SEABOT could lead to findings which might not otherwise be achieved. SEABOT’s work might well produce outcomes which could open up solutions to immediate regional problems, provide ASEAN planners with new resources and make it possible to eventually define and capitalize on SEA’s “soft power”. That is, new findings should provide the basis for ASEAN diplomats and policy-makers to develop new modalities of cultural diplomacy and improved governance. Last, SEABOT might also open up avenues to tell the SEA story in new distinctive ways. SEABOT is seen as a heuristic device to explore the results which this instrument might yield. More important the discussion will also raise the possibility that an AI-driven perspective on SEA may prove to be even more problematic than it is beneficial.

Constructing Southeast Asia and the Middle East: Two Corners of the “Victorian World”

Stephen L. Keck 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 2015 Suvannabhumi Vol.7 No.2

How should we conceptualize regions? What is the context in which new approaches to regional study take place? What is the role of historical change in the reconceptualization of regions or areas? This article addresses this issue by using two case studies to shed light on the history of regional study by comparing some of the ways in which the Middle East and Southeast Asia have been conceptualized. Accordingly, the discussion traces the ways in which these areas were understood in the 19th century by highlighting the ideas of a number of influential Victorian thinkers. The Victorians are useful because not only did British thinkers play critical roles in the shaping of modern patterns of knowledge, but their empire was global in scope, encompassing parts of both Southeast Asia and the Middle East. However, the Victorians regarded these places quite differently: Southeast Asia was frequently described as “Further India” and the Middle East was the home of the Ottoman Empire. Both of these places were at least partly understood in relation to the needs of British policy-makers, who tended to focus most of their efforts according to the needs of India— which was their most important colonial possession. The article exhibits the connections between the “Eastern Question” and end of the Ottoman Empire (and the political developments which followed) led to the creation of the concept of “Middle East”. With respect to Southeast Asia, attention will be devoted to the works of Alfred Russell Wallace, Hugh Clifford, and others to see how “further India” was understood in the 19th century. In addition, it is clear that the successful deployment of the term “Southeast Asia” reflected the political needs of policy makers in wake of decolonization and the Cold War. Finally, by showing the constructive nature of regions, the article suggests one possible new path for students of Southeast Asia. If the characterization of the region is marked by arbitrary factors, it may actually point to a useful avenue of enquiry, a hermeneutic of expedience. Emphasis on the adaptive and integrative features of lived realities in Southeast Asia may well be a step beyond both the agendas of “colonial knowledge” and anti-colonial nationalism.

Making Southeast Asia Visible: Restoring the Region to Global History

( Stephen L. Keck ) 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원(구 부산외국어대학교 동남아지역원) 2020 Suvannabhumi Vol.12 No.2

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?

The British “Discovery” of Southeast Asia

( Stephen L. Keck ) 서강대학교 동아연구소 2011 東亞 硏究 Vol.30 No.1

This paper argues that the despite the fact that the British were heavily involved in Southeast Asian history, they were relatively late in beginning the organized scholarly research into the region. In fact, it would be external pressures which would motivate the British to decide to regard the area as a distinct region. Nonetheless, British civil servants and travelers had been writing about their wide and varied encounters with the region and its peoples for two centuries or more. Exploring this literature leads to the conclusion that while the British had yet to commit the resources to the organized academic investigation of Southeast Asia, they did understand it in relation to questions involving modernization, ethnic groups, commercial development and the purpose of empire.

When Disease Defines a Place: Batavia in British Diplomatic and Military Narratives, 1775-1850

Stephen Keck 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 2022 Suvannabhumi Vol.14 No.2

The full impact of COVID-19 has yet to be felt: while it may not define the new decade, it is clear that its immediate significance was to test many of the basic operating assumptions and procedures of global civilization. Even as vaccines are developed and utilized and even as it is possible to see the beginning of the end of COVID-19 as a discrete historical event, it remains unclear as to its ultimate importance. That said, it is evident that the academic exploration of Southeast Asia will also be affected by both the global and regional experiences of the pandemic. “Breakthroughs of Area Studies and ASEAN in the Era of Homo Untact” promises to help reconceptualize the study of the region by highlighting the importance of redefined spatial relationships and new potentially depersonalized modes of communication. This paper acknowledges these issues by suggesting that the transformations caused by the pandemic should motivate scholars to raise new questions about how to understand humanity—particularly as it is defined by societies, nations and regions. Given that COVID-19 (and the response to it) has altered many of the fundamental rhythms of globalized regions, there is sufficient warrant for re-examining both the ways in which disease, health and their related spaces affect the perceptions of Southeast Asia. To achieve “breakthroughs” into the investigation of the region, it makes sense to have another glance at the ways in which the discourses about diseases and health may have helped to inscribe definitions of Southeast Asia—or, at the very least, the nations, societies and peoples who live within it. In order to at least consider these larger issues, the discussion will concentrate on a formative moment in the conceptualization of Southeast Asia-British engagement with the region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. To that end three themes will be highlighted: (1) the role that British diplomatic and military narratives played in establishing the information priorities required for the construction of colonial knowledge; (2) the importance not only of “colonial knowledge” but information making in its own right; (3) in anticipation of the use of big data, the manner in which manufactured information (related to space and disease) could function in shaping early British perceptions of Southeast Asia—particularly in Batavia and Java. This discussion will suggest that rather than see social distancing or increased communication as the greatest outcome of COVID-19, instead it will be the use of data— that is, big, aggregated biometric data which have not only shaped responses to the pandemic, but remain likely to produce the reconceptualization of both information and knowledge about the region in a way that will be at least as great as that which took place to meet the needs of the “New Imperialism.” Furthermore, the definition and articulation of Southeast Asia has often reflected political and security considerations. Yet, the experience of COVID-19 could prove that data and security are now fused into a set of interests critical to policy-makers. Given that the pandemic should accelerate many existing trends, it might be foreseen these developments will herald the triumph of homo indicina: an epistemic condition whereby the human subject has become a kind of index for its harvestable data. If so, the “breakthroughs” for those who study Southeast Asia will follow in due course.

Recovering a lost Genealogy : Taw Sein Ko and the Colonial Roots of ‘Myanmar Studies’

Stephen KECK 부산외국어대학교 동남아지역원 2011 Suvannabhumi Vol.3 No.2

또세인꼬는 19세기 후반에서 20세기 초 식민지 버마의 지적 발전에 지대한 영향을 남긴 중요한 인물이지만 잊혀졌던 인물이다. ‘미얀마 연구’의 몇몇 뿌리가 식민지 시대에 있음을 고려할 때, 또세인꼬의 저작은 미얀마를 연구하고 이해하려는 오늘날의 노력에 의미하는 바가 크다. 그는 고고학적 저술로 잘 알려져 있긴 하지만, 그의 저작과 경력을 검토해 본 결과 그는 식민지사회에서 공적 지식인으로 활약했음을 알 수 있었다. 아시아 연구(특히 버마 연구)의 발전이 제국주의적 틀 속에서 이루어질 때, 또세인꼬는 식민지 버마에 존재했던 혼성적 저술전통을 따라 저술했다. 또세인꼬는 버마인의 관점이나 가장 공감할 수 있는 언어로 도회지 독자들에게 호소하는 방법과 같은 그 어느 길에서도 벗어났던 스콧, 오코너, 그리고 필딩-홀과 같은 영국학자들의 그룹에 속한다. 또세인꼬의 저술을 연구하는 것은 식민지적 지식과 버마에 관한 영국인의 저작에 관한 연구가 유용하게 재개념화 될 수 있는 기초를 갖추는데 도움이 된다. 주제어 : 버마, 지식인, 혼종(混種), 역사편찬, 식민주의