Southeast Asian Studies in Asia: Recent Trend

<p>The fourth Kashiyama-seminar, held as an international symposium at the annual conference of Japan Association for Asian Studies (June 2019, Keio University), focused on recent research trends of Southeast Asian Studies in the academic community in Asia, titled “Southeast Asian Studies in Asia: New Perspectives on Inter-Asia Relations.”</p><p>Southeast Asian Studies have become remarkably globalized, through a series of transformations including a significant geographic shift of major research centers from the West to Asia itself. The coverage of the studies to include within each Southeast Asian country is also expanding beyond single-country case studies to include wider regional perceptives, comparative studies, and international collaborations. Southeast Asian Studies is also an increasingly active field in a number of East Asian countries including China, Taiwan and Korea, as well as here in Japan.</p><p>The purpose of the symposium was to view these diversified research trends in the academic community, and to discuss the future possibility lead by four speakers. Professor BI Shihong, professor at Yunnang University in China, discussed about the characteristics of the recent research trend in Southeast Asian Studies in China, pointing out that the studies were recently activated by the policy of the Belt and Load Initiative, while remaining challenges could be found in the overemphasizing of political science studies and of China-oriented views, and insufficient experience of field research.</p><p>Professor Nualnoi Treerat, associate professor at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, focused on the trend in research and organization setup on economic development of the Indochina sub-region based in Thailand, pointing out that academic concerns tend to expand beyond simple infrastructure construction, toward the issues of information technology for the coming digital economy era, and of labour migration across the region.</p><p>Mr. Didi Kwartanada, managing director at Nation Building Foundation in Indonesia, talked on the recent development of ethnic Chinese studies in Indonesia, and its social background; while their culture had been repressed in the Suharto era, ethnic Chinese in Indonesia regained their identity and saw it further bloom after the new regime in 1998, and up to the present day.</p><p>Professor R. Michael Feener, now at Kyoto University in Japan (but at Oxford at the time of the 2019 seminar) spoke on the history of and contemporary developments in the study of Muslim societies of Southeast Asia, with particular attention to the current expansion of work in this area within the region.</p>