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 Deparment 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, we would like to hold a workshop "Southeast Asia in a global perspec-tive" as part of the conference on development studies. The workshop has 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 would like to discuss in how far scholars working on Southeast Asia position themselves with regard to the question of area studies versus disciplinary approaches.
Finally, we would like to discuss the relationship between disciplinary research and area studies on the one hand and a transdisciplinary research agenda on the other.

To this aim we invite scholars doing research on Southeast Asia to 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 our discussion, we would also like to ask the presenters 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 (as of 20 October 2011)

Chairs: Petra Dannecker, Wolfram Schaffar

Disciplinary approaches to Southeast Asia

Alexander Trupp, Mag., Univ. Assistant, (tbc)
Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna
"Southeast Asian Studies at the Department of Geography and Regional Research"

Melanie Pichler, MMag., Alfred Gerstl, Mag. Dr.,
Department of Political Science, University of Vienna
"Political Science and Area Studies"

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
"Southeast Asian studies at Passau University"

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 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."