Who Made Southeast Asia? Personages, Programs and Problems in the Pursuit of a Region

King, Victor T. Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies 2020 Suvannabhumi Vol.12 No.2

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 disciplinarybased 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.

Identities in Maritime Southeast Asia: Ethnicity and Nation-state

Victor T. King 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 2016 Suvannabhumi Vol.8 No.2

Southeast Asian Studies: Insiders and Outsiders, or is Culture and Identity a Way Forward?

Victor T. King 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 2016 Suvannabhumi Vol.8 No.1

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.

Revisiting and Reconstructing Southeast Asian Characteristics

Victor T. King 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 2016 Suvannabhumi Vol.8 No.1

Negotiations in Space and Time: Changing Gender Relations in Thai Tourist-oriented Encounters

Victor T. King,J. Rotheray 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 2019 Suvannabhumi Vol.11 No.2

The paper addresses Erik Cohen’s pioneering work on tourism in Thailand, specifically his publications on the relations between Thai women and foreign (farang) men in tourist-oriented encounters. Of sociological-anthropological interest is his conceptualization of these relations as “open-ended prostitution as a skilful game of luck” based on his study of a Bangkok soi (lane) in 1981-1984, and his exploration of Thai culture in terms of ambiguity and contradiction. On the basis of recent ethnographic research in the northern Thai tourist hub of Chiang Mai and wide-ranging observations on tourism development in Thailand, we examine continuity and change in these male-female engagements since Cohen’s research, especially in the context of the increasing availability of such electronic agencies as social media, messaging, video chat, and internet dating. Whereas Cohen’s concept of ambiguity and illusion has tended to disappear from physical spaces, it seems to have resurfaced in virtual space. The complexities of host-guest relations, and particularly the interactions both within the variegated category of “guests” themselves and then between their “hostesses” are explored in terms of sites of tourism-oriented encounters in both physical and virtual space so as to deconstruct these oppositional categories which have been formative in studies of tourism.

Other Southeast Asias? Beyond and Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

( Victor T. King ) 부산외국어대학교 동남아지역원 2018 Suvannabhumi Vol.10 No.2

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.

Alternative Approaches in Southeast Asian Studies: Compounding Area Studies and Cultural Studies

( Victor T. King ) 부산외국어대학교 동남아지역원 2018 Suvannabhumi Vol.10 No.2

Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian Studies: Issues in Multidisciplinary Studies and Methodology

Victor T. King 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 2015 Suvannabhumi Vol.7 No.1

The paper brings together several strands of debate and deliberation in which I have been involved since the early 2000s on the definition of Southeast Asia and the rationale of Southeast Asian Studies. I refer to the relationship between area studies and methodologies as a conundrum (or puzzle), though I should state from the outset that I think it is much more of a conundrum for others than for me. I have not felt the need to pose the question of whether or not area studies generates a distinctive method or set of methods and research practices, because I operate from a disciplinary perspective; though that it is not to say that the question should not be posed. Indeed, as I have earned a reputation for “revisionism” and championing disciplinary approaches rather than regional ones, it might be anticipated already the position that I take in an examination of the relationships between methodologies and the practice of “area studies” (and in this case Southeast Asian [or Asian] Studies). Nevertheless, given the recent resurgence of interest in the possibilities provided by the adoption of regional perspectives and the grounding of data gathering and analysis within specified locations in the context of globalization, the issues raised for researchers working in Southeast Asia and within the field of Southeast Asian Studies require revisiting.

Southeast Asian Studies: Area, Method and Comparison

Victor T. King 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 2015 Suvannabhumi Vol.7 No.1

Who Made Southeast Asia? Personages, Programs and Problems in the Pursuit of a Region

( Victor T. King ) 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원(구 부산외국어대학교 동남아지역원) 2020 Suvannabhumi Vol.12 No.2

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 disciplinarybased 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.