State Power, Social Conflicts and Security Policy In Southeast Asia

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Jones
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
State Power ◽  
Social Conflicts

Beyond securitization: explaining the scope of security policy in Southeast Asia

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Security Policy

Islamicate Cosmopolitanism from North Africa to Southeast Asia

2018 ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Bruce B. Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
State Power ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Ibn Khaldun

Lawrence introduces the idea that ‘Islamicate cosmopolitans’ engage in moral introspection to fashion a genuine orientation of openness to religious-cum-cultural difference. Drawing from the work of Marshall Hodgson, Lawrence argues that these cosmopolitans carried a specific conscience, a conscience that precedes Islam yet was reshaped by the Quran and ethical reflection within Muslim empires. The chapter then explores two renowned pre-modern thinkers, the scientific polymath Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī and the legal scholars Ibn Khaldūn, as exemplars of a universal ethos with an Islamicate accent. Yet, Lawrence also acknowledges how notions of cosmopolitan justice could nevertheless sustain coercion by directing Muslim commitment to state power through concepts such as the medieval ‘circle of justice’.

scholarly journals The Volatile State in Southeast Asia: Evidence from Sumatra, 1600–1800

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 497-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freek Colombijn
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
State Power ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
The State ◽  
Central State ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
State Capital

The communis opinio of historians is that early modern, or precolonial, states in Southeast Asia tended to lead precarious existences. The states were volatile in the sense that the size of individual states changed quickly, a ruler forced by circumstances moved his state capital, the death of a ruler was followed by a dynastic struggle, or a local subordinate head either ignored or took over the central state power; in short, states went through short cycles of rise and decline. Perhaps nobody has helped establish this opinion more than Clifford Geertz (1980) with his powerful metaphor of the “theatre state.” Many scholars have preceded and followed him in their assessment of the shakiness of the state (see, for example, Andaya 1992, 419; Bentley 1986, 292; Bronson 1977, 51; Hagesteijn 1986, 106; Milner 1982, 7; Nagtegaal 1996, 35, 51; Reid 1993, 202; Ricklefs 1991, 17; Schulte Nordholt 1996, 143–48). The instability itself was an enduring phenomenon. Most polities existed in a state of flux, oscillating between integration and disintegration, a phenomenon which was first analyzed for mainland Southeast Asia by Edmund Leach (1954) in his seminal work on the Kachin chiefdoms. This alternation of state formation and the breaking up of kingdoms has been called the “ebb and flow of power” and the “rhythm” of Malay history (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 35). In this article, I will probe into the causes of the volatility of the Southeast Asian states, using material from Sumatra to make my case.

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