Panel

Panel Abstract EUROSEAS 2010

Title: New Theoretical Approaches towards Southeast Asian Studies
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Panel organizers: Prof. Vincent Houben, Berlin (vincent.houben@online.de)
Prof. Heinzpeter Znoj, Bern

Southeast Asian studies belong to the so-called area studies and have therefore been part of several debates on their merits and shortcomings which have re-emerged since the 1990s. At this juncture, the legitimacy and importance of area studies as such are no longer put into question, since the globalization paradigm of homogenization has at least been supplemented by one focusing on processes of localization and diversification. At the same time, however, the various ‘turns’ in the social-cultural sciences as well as the humanities, have broken up positivist perspectives on the area as such, showing that area study knowledge production has been part of particular epistemological assumptions. As a result area studies as self-evident containers of specialized knowledge have been broken up and are in a process of reconfiguration. Consequently, studies on transnational processes at sites of cultural interaction in decentered localities are currently emerging everywhere in the field.
The current shift in Southeast Asian studies, resulting from the move beyond structuralist epistemologies, raise new and challenging questions with regard to the theories that can and should be used. Are area studies by necessity theoretically weak and do they still largely need to depend on theories from the established disciplines or do area studies have the potential to generate new theories since they are not bound to particular set of questions based upon experiences in the West? Assuming that Southeast Asian history, politics, social and cultural studies are positioned in an intermediate zone between discipline and area or even in a third expanse beyond these two, what kind of theories can be expected to emerge?
This panel aims at accommodating papers both from theoretically interested specialists on Southeast Asian studies and those who would like to probe into theoretical questions on the basis of concrete empirical research. A mix of junior and senior researchers working on different fields within Southeast Asian studies is welcomed, since new theoretical approaches are most likely to emerge from an open and unconventional debate among Southeast Asianists of different sorts.