Panel

EuroSEAS Conference
26-28 August 2010
Gothenburg, Sweden

Critical Approaches to Southeast Asian Regionalism
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The study of Southeast Asian regionalism by International Relations scholars has long been dominated by the debate between ‘bashers’ and ‘boosters’ of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, roughly corresponding to proponents of realist and constructivist interpretations of Southeast Asian regionalism. Discussion has centred around whether ASEAN’s thin institutions are a sign of weakness of evidence of the generation of regional norms and identities that can bring lasting peace. A range of third-generation, critical approaches are now emerging, however, which bypass this increasingly stale debate and seek instead to shed new light on regionalism and regional politics – wherein ASEAN is just one of many potential players. These approaches draw on methods from discourse analysis, historical sociology and political economy to investigate why Southeast Asian regionalism takes the institutional and ideological forms it does, drawing attention to, among other things, the determination of regional politics by social conflict within states, and the discursive construction of regional regimes. This panel explores the insights critical approaches can provide and their potential to contribute to broader International Relations theory.
 

Convenor Dr Lee Jones, Lecturer in International Relations, Queen Mary University of London, UK (l.c.jones@qmul.ac.uk)

Chair Prof Fredrik Söderbaum, Associate Professor, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg (fredrik.soderbaum@globalstudies.gu.se)

Presenters and Papers

A Critical Turn in Asia-Pacific IR Theory? Challenges and Prospects
Dr See Seng TAN
Associate Professor
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
(ISSSTan@ntu.edu.sg)

The Domestic Roots of Security Policy in Southeast Asia
Dr Lee Jones
Lecturer in International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
(l.c.jones@qmul.ac.uk)

Contested Regionalism in Southeast Asia: The Politics of the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline Project
Dr Toby Carroll
Research Fellow, Centre on Asia and Globalisation, National University of Singapore
(tcarroll@nus.edu.sg)

A Living Document: The ASEAN Charter and the Discursive Construction of Regionalism in Southeast Asia
Katja Freistein
Research Associate, Frankfurt University, Germany
freistein@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Non-Traditional Security and New Modes of Security Governance in Southeast Asia
Dr Shahar Hameiri
Lecturer in International Politics and Fellow of the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Australia
S.Hameiri@murdoch.edu.au