Modern Southeast Asian Studies: Suggested Readings (2010-2024) (2024)

Chinese Foreign Policy: Southeast Asia

in Weiping Wu and Mark Frazier, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Contemporary China (Los Angles and London: Sage Publications, 2018), vol. 1, pp. 610-630

Review of Hill, Hal. Ed. RegionaldynamicsinadecentralizedIndonesia. Singapore, ISEAS,2014.

The Radio UNTAC Archive at the University of Wisconsin Madison

Towards Community Formation in Southeast Asia? History Education, ASEAN and the Nation-State

In 2003 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations declared the establishment of an ASEAN Community. The teaching of regional history is seen as indispensable to the attainment of this goal. Eight country reports commissioned by UNESCO Bangkok in 2013 serve as the basis of an inquiry into history education and the teaching of Southeast Asian history in primary and secondary schools. State control of education has produced school systems that, despite their potential, hamper the imagining of a regional community. Under state directives, schools prioritize political socialization into the nation-state and sacrifice shared regional history in favour of national history. Yet promoting interest in national and Southeast Asian histories is possible.

State Power, Social Conflict and Security Policy in Southeast Asia

in Richard Robison (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian Politics (London: Routledge 2011), 346-360

On the Viability of Indigenous Methodology: Implications on Southeast Asian Studies

e Principle of Non-Interference in ASEAN: Can Malaysia Spearhead the Effort towards a More Interventionist ASEAN

repo.uum.edu.my

The Inescapable Territorial Trap in IR Theories: US Role in the Thai-Lao Border from 1954 to 1975

EUROSEAS, Oxford University, 2017

This presentation argues that International Relations as a discipline has a strong interrelationship with geopolitics. The geopolitical characteristics are the self-claim for objectivity, Western supremacy, separation of space and peoples assumption, and the expectation for nationalistic advice. The four characteristics, this research argues, lead to the territorial trap of the political geographer John Agnew (1994). The traps are the dichotomous understanding of inside/outside space of the state, the myth of self-contained state and the border reification monopolized by the elites. This research uses the Thai-Lao border as an example of how scholars in International Relations, especially in Anglo-Saxon world, have been caught in the traps from the year of Laos’ independence in 1954 to 1975 that Laos became a communist state. Despite International Relations’ literature often not being aware of the solutions to escape from the territorial trap as proposed by Agnew and Corbridge (1995), the historical awareness of the states involved, broader social and economic structure of a hegemon, and changes in geopolitical order – were taken into theoretical consideration by a number of scholars. However, the three territorial traps mentioned have remained. This was because the geopolitical characteristics have never disappeared. In conclusion, this research demonstrates how spatial conceptualisation in international politics was portrayed among academia and state practitioners at the peak of the Cold War. It shows that very often, academia and state practitioners are caught in the territorial trap as it benefit the US policy concerning the Thai-Lao border.

ASEAN's Unchanged Melody? The Theory and Practice of 'Non-Interference' in Southeast Asia

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is widely supposed by theorists and commentators of many persuasions to have elevated the principle of absolute non-interference in the internal affairs of states into a central pillar of Southeast Asian regionalism. Non-interference is also criticised for retarding ASEAN from taking meaningful action over economic crises, problematic members like Myanmar, and transnational security threats. This article critiques this consensus, arguing that the norm has never been absolute, but has rather been upheld or ignored in line with the interests of the region's dominant social forces. While the principle formally remains in place despite such challenges and serious instances of violation, it is now subject to competing demands and contestation. [the full version is available via my website, http://www.leejones.tk; for the fullest account, see my book, 'ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asia' (Palgrave, 2012) http://www.leejones.tk/asean_sovereignty_intervention.html]

ASEAN and the Norm of Non-Interference in Southeast Asia: A Quest for Social Order

This paper critiques the prevailing understanding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a norm-governed regional body by critically examining the norm of non-interference, which is universally regarded as the centre-piece of the so-called ‘ASEAN way’ of regionalism, even by scholars and commentators who are profoundly opposed to it. This overwhelming consensus fares very badly when confronted with empirical evidence to the contrary, which shows that ASEAN states have frequently meddled in the internal affairs of other countries. The paper considers and rejects constructivist and realist explanations of intervention and advances a more coherent logic based on the insights of historical materialism. The paper’s basic argument is that ASEAN states’ fundamental purpose during the Cold War, reflecting the social forces in control of them, was to maintain non-communist social orders. To the extent that non-interference served this purpose, it was respected; but when it did not, it was discarded or twisted to serve the cause of disguising blatant intervention. [note that a more developed version of this argument, which extends beyond the Cold War, has since been published as 'ASEAN's Unchanged Melody? The Theory and Practice of Non-Intervention in Southeast Asia', Pacific Review 23:3 (2010), 479-502. This article is available via my website, http://www.leejones.tk. For the fullest account, see my book, 'ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asia' (Palgrave, 2012) http://www.leejones.tk/asean_sovereignty_intervention.html]