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

  • SUVANNABHUMI
  • Abbr : SVN
  • 2018, 10(2), pp.57-85
  • DOI : 10.22801/svn.2018.10.2.57
  • Publisher : Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies
  • Research Area : Social Science > Area Studies > Southeast Asia
  • Received : March 7, 2018
  • Accepted : November 25, 2018
  • Published : December 31, 2018

Victor T. King 1

1Borneo Studies at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

ABSTRACT

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.

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