Introduction:

Reconceptualizing
Southeast Asia

Amitav Acharya
Department of Political Science
York University

Ananda Rajah
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

This collection of papers is the outcome of a panel, which bore the title of this volume,
convened by the editors, at the Third ASEAN Inter-University Seminar on Social
Development in Pekanbaru, 16-19 June 1997. The overall theme of the regional
conference was "Nation, Region and the Modern World". The panel was sponsored
collaboratively by the Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies (University of Toronto-
York University) and the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore.
The purpose of the panel was to rethink the regional identity of, and regional
processes in, Southeast Asia.
The issue is not a new one. The claim that Southeast Asia is a "region" has
been a matter of debate from the very outset. It has been the subject of much
deliberation among distinguished scholars who have helped to establish Southeast
Asia as a legitimate area of study within that general inter- and multidisciplinary
category of scholarly and academic enquiry called "area studies". The term "area
studies" has been slowly giving way to "regional studies", an evolution which is
by no means irrelevant to the concerns of the papers in this volume although this
is not explicitly dealt with. The aim of the panel was to build upon the foundations
established by these earlier scholars who had looked reflexively at a "region" to
which they had devoted their very considerable skills and intellectual abilities. It
is testimony to their scholarship, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, that they were
indeed able to establish that such a thing as Southeast Asian studies could be a
viable field of scholarly investigation. Their work and that of many others whom
they had trained and who succeeded them or are in the process of doing so - all
as "Southeast Asianists" - have contributed
immediately recognizable
significantly to understandings of the diverse facets of Southeast Asia. The corpus
of work on Southeast Asia as an area or region of study is now massive but,
nevertheless, none would claim that the sum total of the knowledge and
understanding embodied in these works is encyclopaedic.
An examination of the descriptions of the region from the 1970s to the present
indicates that previous conceptualizations of Southeast Asia as a unitary field of
study and analysis have given way to a broader conceptualization amongst
political actors in the region. There has been a conjoining of the erstwhile Southeast
Asia, which many scholars were hard put to assert existed as an entity in its own
2

right, and East Asia in political and media discourses which are now accepted
unquestioningly. It is interesting that this has been based on cultural criteria as
can be seen in assertions that high rates of economic growth in East and Southeast
Asia have been the consequence of "traditional Asian values" which emphasize
among other things the primary importance of the family, thrift, societal cohesion,
consensus and the value of education. What is left unsaid in these assertions is
that this growth has taken place through the active embrace of imported industrial-
capitalist systems of production, distribution and consumption within a global
economic system. The current economic crisis, however, has led to a questioning
of the validity of these assertions and some rejuvenation of the so-called "Asian
values debate".
It is precisely for such reasons that it was felt that the time was right to
attempt a reconsideration of Southeast Asia as a region. In general, the very fact
that there is now such an enormous body of work from various disciplines on
multifarious aspects of Southeast Asia means that there are now more conceptual
and theoretical perspectives with which to view the "region". It also means that
new possibilities have opened up for re-assessing the issues dealt with in earlier
work. Many of these disciplines have themselves developed new conceptual and
theoretical frameworks based on research in other areas which have then been
applied to Southeast Asian conditions. However, it is worth pointing out that work
on Southeast Asia, especially after the Second World War, has also contributed to
the development of these disciplines, an important contribution that has not always
been recognized. At the same time, post-Second World War Southeast Asia has,
from a fin-de-s18cle perspective, undergone profound and rapid change. In the 1950s
and 1960s, who would have imagined that there would eventually be a regional
association of states that would come to include all but one of the so-called
Southeast Asian countries? In short, recent global developments and regional
interactions challenge many of the traditional assumptions underpinning the
concept of Southeast Asia.
This is also an appropriate time to rethink the notion of Southeast Asia for
three specific reasons. First, globalization is not only challenging the traditional
concept of the nation-state, but also the very idea of region and the traditional
delineation of regional boundaries. It is bringing about fundamental changes to
the way regions are conceptualized and constructed. Southeast Asia's integration
into the world economy is creating new economic linkages and structures that can
no longer be analysed by holding onto the official physical and political conception
of the region.
Second, intra-regional linkages within Southeast Asia have been transformed.
For the first time in history, there is a regional organization that claims to represent
all 10 "official" Southeast Asian countries (Cambodia is still outside of ASEAN,
but not for long). The political division of Southeast Asia, based on the relative
intensity of nationalism and competing ideological orientations of regimes, which
marked Southeast Asia since the end of the Second World War, has come to an
end. Notwithstanding differences among Southeast Asian states in terms of their
openness to the global economy, their domestic social and political organization,
and their relationship with the outside world, Southeast Asia today arguably
displays far more homogeneity and convergence in terms of the acceptance of the
 3

idea of the nation-state and the notion of regionalism than at any other time in
the past.
Third, we have seen the emergence of new ways of thinking about regions and
regionness. The earlier "scientific" or positivist approaches that "measured"
regionness by using concrete empirical indicators, and then by adding in levels of
interaction and interconnectedness, have given way to efforts that view regions
primarily as "imagined" constructs. If the nation-state can be an "imagined
community" as Ben Anderson has argued, can regions therefore also be imagined?
Earlier scholarly conceptions of Southeast Asia have relied predominantly on
a "unity in diversity" approach. These approaches assume a regional identity, despite
conceding important differences. Yet, upon closer reflection, the "unity in diversity"
approach appears to be a flawed one. First, it ignores the impact of change. Second,
the traditional approach understates the deliberate construction of Southeast Asia
as a region. There has been a shift from external, imperial and orientalist
constructions of Southeast Asia to internal constructions, as a reaction to the
simplistic Cold War geopolitical view of Southeast Asia prevailing in the US which
treated the region as a "region in revolt" and a region of chronic instability. Thus,
beyond the unity in diversity approach, Southeast Asia is a region that has been
imagined or constructed by human endeavour, imagination and political currents.
What is clear is that the notion of Southeast Asia as a cultural or geographic entity
is manifestly overstated. What is less contestable is that the notion of Southeast Asia
has a far greater plausibility as an imagined construct.
Southeast Asia emerged from the colonial era as an unlikely region, one that
was politically divided and conceptually fragmented. Colonialism had pulled the
states in different political, economic and social directions. There is little doubt that
Southeast Asian countries themselves have been increasingly concerned with
presenting an "indigenous" (or, more precisely, endogenous) view of the region,
one that seeks to reconnect political identities lost during the prolonged colonial
era and to celebrate their emergence as modern entities able to handle their
domestic and regional affairs, and to carve out a distinctive place in an increasingly
globalized world.
The five articles included in this special issue of the Southeast Asian Journal of
Social Science provide a good sampling of the new ways of (re)looking at Southeast
Asia as a region. Anthony Reid's essay, which was delivered as the keynote address
at the Pekanbaru conference, evaluates recent attempts to develop the notion of
"one Southeast Asia" against a larger historical backdrop in which he identifies
two types of regional "construction". The first is the "positive" kind, centred
around areas which today go in the name of Singapore and Malaysia. This claim
to regionness assumes the centrality of commerce and communications, rather than
civilization or empire which formed the cores of other historic regions. The second
is a negative construction of the region, taking place primarily in peripheral states
of the region because of their refusal to be seen as appendages of their larger and
more threatening neighbours. Such examples include Burma vis--vis India, and
Vietnam vis-9-vis China both of which wanted a Southeast Asian identity as "a kind
of default option". Reid also links these underlying claims of regionness to the
early post-Second World War efforts by leaders of the region to develop a notion
of Southeast Asia based on regional cooperation and organization. Despite their
4

persistence and progress, such constructions of Southeast Asia remain inclusive

and fragile. This is because, as Reid sees it, Southeast Asia is "saucer-like", lacking
a dominant centre. This aggravates the forces of disunity and fragmentation within
the region, such as its lack of a common civilizational heritage, and the dependence
of its states on foreign powers.
Stephen Douglas's article uses the concept of "centre" and "balance" as
analytic tools to study both state identity and regionness. Douglas speaks of the
natural tendency of Southeast Asian societies to look for and gravitate towards
a centre. But what keeps societies stable is the countervailing effects of
"balancing" ideologies that keep at bay the tendency towards extremism. Such
a dynamic can be discerned from official state ideologies, such as Rukunegara in
Malaysia, Melayu Islam Berjaya (MIB) in Brunei, Pancasila in Indonesia, and
"Shared Values" in Singapore, which are surveyed in this article. In the final
section, Douglas applies "centre" and "balance" to Southeast Asia's regionness.
He seeks to identify the "core groups" in Southeast Asia and sub-regional
coalitions such as transnational growth areas as a way of understanding the
region, but concludes that "balance" may be a more central force that holds
Southeast Asia together as a region.
Ananda Rajah's paper questions the utility of traditional depictions of Southeast
Asia as a region in terms of cultural criteria. These depictions are essentialized
characterizations and to the extent that they are directed at identifying Southeast Asia
as a region, they reflect comparatist errors. Rajah argues that the conceptual problem
lies not in how Southeast Asia can or cannot be depicted as a region but, rather, in
conceptualizing regions and regionness as human constructs. It is an argument that
calls for a focus on interactions instead of identity. It asserts that regions are
interpenetrated systems, both in a global sense and in sub-regional terms.
Interpenetration is seen in terms of interactions of varying intensity and density
centring on structures of interest which may be competitive or complementary and
where the role of brokers and broker institutions are pivotal. Accordingly, from a
long-term human historical perspective, endogenous experiences of region and
regionness may well be regarded as variable phenomena depending on the structures
of interest and the part played by brokers and broker institutions in any given
historical period.
Amitav Acharya's approach to understanding Southeast Asia as a region
is undertaken from an international relations perspective. It stresses regionalism
as the chief agent in regional construction. Acharya argues that the modern,
post-war concept of Southeast Asia results from a deliberate effort by a group
of governments in the region to develop a regional identity based on political
and strategic considerations. Far from subsuming nationalism and national
interest, these governments saw regionalism and regional identity as an
important way of furthering them. As a result, we have a clear shift from the
colonial, orientalist and geopolitical view of Southeast Asia's regionness to a
more indigenous and essential political idea of Southeast Asia emerging out of
the evolution of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While
Acharya uses the idea of "imagined community" as a framework for exploring
Southeast Asia's regionness, he also goes beyond it by looking at the role of
traditional politico-cultural frameworks (such as the mandala system identified
 5

by O.W. Wolters), and pre-capitalist commerce (drawing upon Reid's work) in

building modern regional identities.
Michael Vatikiotis's essay reflects a concern with themes similar to those in
Acharya's. It asserts that Southeast Asia was never united in a territorial sense nor
was it culturally homogeneous and that if Southeast Asia has come to reflect any
semblance of cohesion, this has largely been the result of pragmatic security
concerns. But while Acharya stresses the "indigenous" construction of the region
and highlights the problems of intramural unity, Vatikiotis is more concerned with
demonstrating how it was that the external powers, i.e. Western superpowers,
encouraged the region to come together. However, it has been these very pragmatic
concerns which have led the ASEAN states to refrain from establishing an all-
embracing Southeast Asian identity. Looking forward, Vatikiotis argues that the
inclusion of all the Southeast Asian states (with the present exception of Cambodia)
may well generate centrifugal forces precisely because of the diverse interests of
an enlarged number of member states and, therefore, the emergence of possible
new fault lines.
In putting together this collection of essays, the editors have been guided by a
conviction that understanding the "regionness" of Southeast Asia requires a
methodological pluralism and an ability to transcend narrow disciplinary boundaries
which are not easily found in the available literature. The authors of the papers which
make up this collection come from different continents and disciplinary backgrounds
but they all share a common interest: understanding Southeast Asia in a time of
significant transitions and transformations. There are evident complementarities in
the papers. A common thread which unites them is the emphasis on how Southeast
Asia as a region can be seen as a construction.
Reid, for example, draws attention to how academics and scholars who
worked in Southeast Asia came to see it as a region and helped to establish
Southeast Asian studies as a field of inquiry in its own right. But, he also offers a
model of how elites in the various countries which are now seen to constitute the
region may have come to the decision that this was a "natural" choice so to speak.
Douglas, in focusing on official ideologies, has identified a central feature of
postcolonial state-building processes in Southeast Asia. Whilst these ideologies are
directed at the citizenry for the purposes of nation-building, these nation-building
attempts have sought to emphasize "balance" and the role of the "centre". These
are domestic political concerns, but one could argue that these modes of political
thought have informed the way in which the political leaders of the various
Southeast Asian states have dealt with one another in forming ASEAN. Within this
regional association of states, the states remain distinct "centres", but they deal
with one another in terms of "balance" or, to use their language, "consensus" and
"non-interference in domestic affairs" of their neighbours, and so on. Rajah pursues
the constructivist theme by attempting a sociologically-grounded general
conceptual framework for understanding how the region has been and is
endogenously experienced. The argument that this is based on structures of interest
clearly fits in with the arguments of Reid, Douglas, Acharya and Vatikiotis.
Acharya, sees the construction of a regional identity as the product of regionalism
in which political and security concerns have been paramount. Political and
security concerns are nothing if not a set of structures of interest and as Acharya
6

argues they have resulted, if not in an "imagined [regional] community" then most
certainly in "imagined proximities". As with Acharya, Vatikiotis makes it quite
clear that Southeast Asia in general has been marked by considerable diversity and
that with the formation of ASEAN, the claim to a Southeast Asian identity can only
be viewed as a politically motivated aspiration to an imagined identity for
pragmatic reasons.