Experiencing Southeast Asian Studies in China: A reverse culture shock

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.

Vietnamese Studies in Germany

From modest beginnings in the 1950s and 1960s, Vietnamese studies experienced a slow but consistent rise in Germany. In the GDR, the rise was connected first with close relations between the two communist states. Second, the area studies’ concept favored Vietnamese studies as a subject of Southeast Asian studies, rather than as a side subject of sinology as it had been before. In both parts of Germany, the interest in Vietnam has grown, especially after its reunification in 1975. Since 1990, at least one place is continuing to teach the subject in the framework of the Southeast Asian Languages and Cultures Program. In this way, one of the two professorships could be preserved.

The Development of Vietnamese Studies in Thailand

Vietnamese studies first emerged in Thailand during the Cold War period and developed into a vibrant field after the establishment of Thai-Vietnamese diplomatic relations and the end of the Cambodian conflict. Vietnam’s accession to ASEAN in 1995 and preparation for the ASEAN Economic Community prior to 2015 also provided favorable conditions for the expansion of Vietnamese studies in Thai research and scholarship. However, the study of Vietnam in Thailand is often seen as a part of Southeast Asian studies and ASEAN studies. Research on Vietnam is typically carried out comparatively within a regional context, especially in comparison with Thailand, rather than for its own sake.

Visual methods and the study of Balinese art collections

Digital tools offer new possibilities for visual research, and such tools can provide methods for revitalising our understanding of the field of culture. Despite the importance of the visual as an element of culture, it is only in the last decade that the visual as a phenomenon of seeing has been a major feature of theoretical and methodological approaches to Southeast Asia. The long traditions of art history, anthropology and related fields in Southeast Asian studies have hitherto been focused on empirical documentation. In studying one aspect of the visual archive created by the polymath Gregory Bateson during his partnership with Margaret Mead, I will draw on methodologies that have their origins in Bateson's writings. These methodologies find fresh conditions in digital environments, in ways that allow us to bring into play a variety of theories of the visible.

Conclusion

Inaugurated by a theoretical reading of experimental films from Indonesia, the Conclusion proposes principles and methods for future studies of Southeast Asian cinema. It grapples self-reflexively with the implications of applying critical theory and continental philosophy on undertheorized films from Southeast Asia, and acknowledges historical apprehensions regarding theory’s ability to imperialize knowledge. These intellectual politics render it worthwhile to ponder the political roots of Southeast Asian studies and area studies, for they are disciplines rooted in imperial and neo-imperial projects as well. Out of that conundrum, Southeast Asia’s uniqueness creates challenges for research, but these cinemas may also provide the infrastructure for a method that can wriggle free and clear these ideological or political overhangs.