Southeast Asia in a Global Perspective
Call for participation - Southeast Asia network meeting
It is a commonplace to say that the region of Southeast Asia is characterized by its rich diversity and rapid social, political and economic change. There is hardly any other region which compares to Southeast Asia's ethnic, cultural, linguistic diversity, its social inequality, to the variety of political systems ranging from absolute monarchy to established demo¬cracies, or to the rapid sequence of economic boom and bust. Migration movements within the region as well as between Southeast Asia and other areas of the world are another engine of continuous social change. Moreover, Southeast Asia is influenced by its position between the new economic powers, India and China. Their influence as trade partners and military powers is growing steadily, and so is their role as new donor countries of foreign aid, and as models of alternative patterns of development. This complexity and dynamism poses numerous problems and interesting challenges for research in geography, sociology as well as political science and cultural and religion studies, to name only a few disciplines.
At the international level, the question whether Southeast Asian studies should be treated and organized as a subject of its own right in the sense of area studies has been the issue of controversial debates. The position challenging the area studies approach being that research on Southeast Asia should rather be viewed as valuable input to and foundation for the development of specific disciplines of social science.
Apart from this debate, we observe that concrete studies e.g. on the political development in Thailand or Burma/Myanmar follow a methodological regionalism (or nationalism) and – on the basis of a profound knowledge of the local situation and discourses – tend to treat specific developments as regionally / nationally peculiar phenomena. Equally important is the critique from the side of post-colonial studies which exposes the eurocentric bias of established disciplines of social science and cultural studies.
At the Department of Development Studies in Vienna, an independent approach to the understanding of development phenomena has been established during the past years. The premise that ‘development’ is a phenomenon that can only be taught and analyzed trans¬disci-plinarily and from a global perspective is the basis for our work. This commitment, however, bears great methodological and conceptual challenges, which have to take into account debates on area studies versus disciplinary research as well as post-colonial critique.
On this background, the workshop "Southeast Asia in a global perspec¬tive" as part of the conference on development studies will pursue the following objectives:
- Following the example of the Southeast Asia Update conferences which have been established in the Netherlands in recent years, we would like to invite individuals as well as institutes to present their work on Southeast Asia in order to get to exchange and network.
- Moreover, on the basis of the questions raised above, we will discuss in how far scholars working on Southeast Asia position themselves with regard to the question of area studies versus disciplinary approaches.
- Finally, we will discuss the relationship between disciplinary research and area studies on the one hand and a transdisciplinary research agenda on the other.
To this aim scholars doing research on Southeast Asia will give a brief overview of their research or the research of their institute (presentations of about 10-15 minutes). As a link between the presentations, and as a starting point for the discussion, the presenters are asked to briefly touch upon the question of how they understand their work – as disciplinary research, as area studies or as inter- or transdisciplinary work.
For further details please contact:
wolfram.schaffar@univie.ac.at
petra.dannecker@univie.ac.at
Programme
Friday, 28 October 2011, 16.00-18.30h,
Seminar Room No 2, Institute for International Development, University of Vienna
Sensengasse 3 (ÖFSE/C3)
Chairs: Petra Dannecker, Wolfram Schaffar
16.00-16.45h
Disciplinary approaches to Southeast Asia
Melanie Pichler, MMag., Department of Political Science, Alfred Gerstl, Mag. Dr., Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna
"Diversity without arbitrariness - Political Science and Southeast Asia"
Alexander Trupp, Mag., Univ. Assistant
Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna
"Southeast Asian Studies at the Department of Geography and Regional Research"
Ko Ko Thett, Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna.
"Current Developments in Burma/Myanmar and Development Studies"
17.00-17.45h
Area studies approaches
Rüdiger Frank, Univ.-Prof. Dr.
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna, "Southeast Asian and East Asian studies: What is desirable, what is feasible?"
Rüdiger Korff, Prof. Dr., Sascha Helbardt, Dr., Sandra Kurfürst, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Passau
"What makes a region? Conflicts, struggles and institutions"
Tomáš Petrů, Ph.D., Head of the Department of Asian Studies, Metropolitan University Prague.
"Asian Studies at Prague Metropolitan University Prague"
18.00-18.30h
Development studies in and on Southeast Asia: Inter- and transdiciplinary approaches
Naruemon Thabchumpon, Assistant Professor, PhD, Director of the MA programme International Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
"International Development Studies in and on Southeast Asia"
Petra Dannecker, Univ.-Prof. Dr., Wolfram Schaffar, Univ.-Prof. Dr.,
Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna
"Provincializing Europe, Globalizing Southeast Asia - The Viennese approach to Development studies."