Context and Comparison in Southeast Asia: The Practical Side of the Area Studies-Discipline Debate A Response to the Special Issue of Pacific Affairs: “Context, Concepts, and Comparison in Southeast Asian Studies” (Vol. 87, No. 3)

2015 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 871-888
Author(s):  
Kai Ostwald ◽  
Paul Schuler
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies

Archaeology and Anthropology in Southeast Asia

1987 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-181
Author(s):  
Wilhelm G. Solheim
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Guest Editor ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Island Southeast Asia ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies ◽  
Mainland Southeast Asia

I agreed in the fall of 1979 to be the guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies on the state of the art of archaeology and anthropology in Southeast Asia. This special issue was to be published in March 1984 and I was to have the papers to the editor by the 15th of October 1983; plenty of time I thought. I first attempted to get two senior American anthropologists to be associate editors, one for Mainland Southeast Asia and one for Island Southeast Asia. This did not work out so in the fall of 1980 I started to organize authors for each country. By the summer of 1981 I had arranged authors for thirteen reports.

Thinking Inside and Outside of the Circle of Kings: Reflections on the Comparative and Performative Practice of Southeast Asian Studies

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-100
Author(s):  
Michael Salman
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Institutional Issues ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractEvaluations of the success, viability, and future of Southeast Asian studies in the United States have long been characterized by pessimism, and also by a set of deeply rooted assumptions about what an area studies programme is supposed to be and what it requires to be successful. These assumptions concern not just institutional issues, but conceptions of what makes a region a proper unit for scholarly analysis, conceptions that invariably hinge on explicit or implicit comparisons to other regions. In this essay, I reverse the gaze of such evaluations by turning some of O.W. Wolter's classic notions about Southeast Asian cultures back upon the practice of Southeast Asianists, and by reversing some of the comparisons that are often used to demarcate Southeast Asia as both as distinctive region and a distinctively weak subject for successful area studies. Rather than accept such abstract and a priori notions about what Southeast Asian studies must be and what must be wrong with it, I propose instead a much more expansive, inclusive, and flexible definition of the field based upon the way it is practised in particular places and times. Such a performative model of Southeast Asian studies can take students, pedagogy, diaspora, and diverse transnational flows into account, while emphasizing all the more the importance of Southeast Asia as a field of scholarly and institutional collaboration.

Experiencing Southeast Asian Studies in China: A reverse culture shock

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Kankan Xie
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Culture Shock ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies

Southeast Asian Studies (SEAS) in China has experienced significant changes in the past twenty years. China's rising political and economic power has stimulated growing demands for better understanding of the wider world, resulting in the rapid development of area studies in recent years. Although SEAS in China predated the relatively recent notion of ‘area studies’ by at least half a century, the boom in area studies has profoundly transformed the field, most notably by attracting a large number of scholars to conduct policy-relevant research. Not only does the ‘policy turn’ reflect shifts of research paradigms in the field of SEAS, but it is also consistent with some larger trends prevailing in China's higher education sector and rapidly changing society in general. This article shows that SEAS in China has grown even more imbalanced, as indicated by the rapid growth of language programmes, absolute domination of short-term policy research, and further marginalisation of humanistic subjects. To respond, Chinese universities have adopted new approaches to SEAS depending on their distinct disciplinary foundations, language coverage, faculty interests, and local governments’ policy preferences.

Humane Literacy and Southeast Asian Art

1995 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-158
Author(s):  
Stanley J. O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Research Direction ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Student Interest ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Current State ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Integration Of Learning

Humane literacy? An essay on undergraduate education? Isn't it a solecism to broach such concerns in this special issue ofThe Journal of Southeast Asian Studieswhere contributors are invited to take stock of the current state of scholarship in various fields of study? My response is simply if not now, then when? I am writing from North America where Southeast Asian studies has gained only a precarious beach-head in the academy and nowhere is this more evident than in the very limited undergraduate investment in our field. Despite the fact that any expansion of academic appointments for specialists on the region will be spurred by evidence of general student interest, a concern with that issue, on our occasions of collective self scrutiny, has been subordinated to questions of research direction, funding strategies, and the prevailing degree of accord between the various disciplines and area studies. But, however ancillary the general education mission of the undergraduate college may seem to professional scholars eager to get on both with their research and the training of graduate students, it is nevertheless a principal responsibility of those deans who control academic appointments. We differ from our colleagues within Southeast Asia where an interest in the region can be either assumed, or expected eventually to develop. While American universities place globalization high on their agendas today, it is not at all evident that their students will wish to study about Southeast Asia rather than, say, Africa or Latin America. So we do need to focus on how we may demonstrate the centrality of what we do to the process of self-discovery and the integration of learning that is at the heart of general education.

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