Who Made Southeast Asia? Personages, Programs and Problems in the Pursuit of a Region

• Published in: 수완나부미 Vol. 12; no. 2; pp. 157 - 200
• Main Author: King, Victor T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 부산외국어대학교 아세안연구원 31.07.2020
• Subjects: local approaches; Personages; Programs; Southeast Asian Studies; Western constructs; Programs; Southeast Asian Studies; Personages; Western constructs; local approaches
• ISSN: 2092-738X

This paper explores critically and historically some of the popular academic views concerning the development of the study of Southeast Asia through the lens of the contributions of particular scholars and institutions. Within the broad field of Southeast Asian Studies the focus is on the disciplines of geography, history and ethnology. There are certain views concerning the development of scholarship on Southeast Asia which continue to surface and have acquired, or are in the process of acquiring “mythical” status. Among the most enduring is the claim that the region is a post-Second World War construction primarily arising from Western politico-strategic and economic preoccupations. More specifically, it is said that Southeast Asian Studies for a considerable period of time has been subject to the American domination of this field of scholarship, located in programs of study in such institutions as Cornell, Yale and California, Berkeley, and, within those institutions, focused on particular scholars who have exerted considerable influence on the directions which research has taken. Another is that, based on the model or template of Southeast Asian Studies (and other area studies projects) developed primarily in the USA, it has distinctive characteristics as a scholarly enterprise in that it is multidisciplinary, requires command of the vernacular, and assigns special importance to what has been termed ‘groundedness’ and historical, geographical and cultural contextualization; in other words, a Southeast Asian Studies approach as distinct from disciplinarybased studies addresses local concerns, interests, perspectives and priorities through in-depth, on-the-ground, engaged scholarship. Finally, views have emerged that argue that a truly Southeast Asian Studies project can only be achieved if it is based on a set of locally-generated concepts, methods and approaches to replace Western ethnocentrism and intellectual hegemony.