CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

The target group of this course are bachelor students. The course consists of two larger parts and a final wrap-up session before the exam period. The first half of the course is devoted to studying basic knowledge on Southeast Asia; the second part addresses issues and methods in Transregional Studies.

The learning objectives are given below for each individual lesson:
Lesson 1: Introduction to the course
Lesson 2: Students are able to put Southeast Asia’s history into the context of both Asian and global history. They understand the difference between a world order based on empires and one based on nation-states, and they are able to trace certain phenomena that will be discussed in the forthcoming sessions back to the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial history of the region.
Lesson 3: Students understand that ethnic, religious, lingual, cultural and economic diversity place Southeast Asia in a very distinct position compared to other world regions. This has profound implications for governance and state-society relations in national politics as well as for international relations and regional cohesion (ASEAN). Students learn how the concepts of ‘region’, ‘area’, or ‘world region’ have come about in academia and in politics.
Lesson 4: Students acquire the skills necessary to inter-relate culture, politics, and economy from an institutional perspective. They understand how cultural foundations translate into institutional arrangements and why (formally) identical institutional settings (e.g. in a presidential system) can function utterly different according to cultural context
Lesson 5: Students are able to describe and explain political and economic structures of countries in Southeast Asia by analysing the institutional ‘landscape’, political interests, and societal identities. They understand that informal institutions, hierarchies, and authorities are as important as formal ones for the governance of a country.
Lesson 6: Students become familiar with the concept of transregionalism and understand why this is a relatively recent perspective in Area Studies. They understand why it is important to distinguish between conceptual terms such as international, transnational, translocal, and transregional.
Lesson 7: Students get a first idea of how language can serve as a methodological tool to analyse transregional relations and connectivities. They learn to relate the dynamics of linguistic repertoires with physical and non-physical mobility of people. They are able to explain how ‘emotional geographies’ come about by sharing / using the same language.
Lesson 8: Group work
Lesson 9: Students understand that religious affinities and faith-based relations extend beyond physical geographies and create ‘spaces’ or regions/areas of their own. They learn that intra-religious distinction is often much more relevant for creating a ‘sense of belonging’ than inter-religious difference.
Lesson 10: Group work
Lesson 11: Students become familiar with the approach of ‘new materialism’ in Transregional Studies. They acquire skills that allow them to track and trace transregional and translocal connectivities of people via the study of material items and products such as accessories, phones, fashion items and the like.
Lesson 12: Group work
Lesson 13: Students learn to identify material and immaterial reflections of transregionality. They know how to apply particular concepts to the analysis of transregional connectivity, using Indonesia as a case in point. They understand that Southeast Asia is a ‘region’ on the one hand, but that this concept of region does not apply exhaustingly to the empirical reality in Southeast Asia. A transregional prespective serves to better understand the multiple geographies that ‘meet’ in Southeast Asia.
Lesson 14: :Students know how to trace transregional / translocal connections and connectivities, and they are able to relate them to formal and informal institutions.
Lesson 15: Discussion and wrap-up

Active participation and reading and preparation of texts that are discussed in the individual lessons.

Unit 1: Introduction to the topic (course outline, sources, requirements, work formats, exam)
Unit 2: History and ‘Making’ of Southeast Asia: Features and Characteristics
Unit 3: Southeast Asia in Comparison to Other World Regions: Political Implications of ‘Diversity’
Unit 4: Culture, Politics and Institutions in Southeast Asia
Unit 5: Culture, Politics, and Institutions in Southeast Asia: Education
Unit 6: Introduction to Transregional Studies
Unit 7: Methodological Approaches in Transregional Studies, Part I (theoretical): Language
Unit 8: Methodological Approaches in Transregional Studies, Part I (practical): Language
Unit 9: Methodological Approaches in Transregional Studies, Part I (theoretical): Religion
Unit 10: Methodological Approaches in Transregional Studies, Part I (practical): Religion
Unit 11: Methodological Approaches in Transregional Studies, Part I (theoretical): Material Culture
Unit 12: Methodological Approaches in Transregional Studies, Part I (practical): Material Culture
Unit 13: Transregional Southeast Asia in Indonesia: Hijabers, Punks, Vespa riders, Salafis, …
Unit 14: Southeast Asia in Transregional Perspective
Unit 15: Discussion and wrap-up

Unit 2: Please choose 1-2 texts per person (individually)
Duara, Prasenjit (2013): ‘Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times’; in: Duara, Prasenjit (ed.): Asia Redux. Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 1-28 [pdf]; Raben, Remco (2014): The colonial intrusion: boundaries and structures; in: Owen, Norman G. (ed. 2014): Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian History. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 25-35; Winichakul, Tongchai and Eric Tagliacozzo (2014): Gradations of colonialism in Southeast Asia’s “in-between” places; in: Owen, Norman G. (ed. 2014): Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian History. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 36-45.
Unit 3:
Derichs, Claudia (2014): “Constitutional Rights in Multiethnic States – The Case of Malaysia”; in: Ehlers, Dirk/Henning Glaser/Kittisak Prokati (eds.): Constitutionalism and Good Governance: Eastern and Western Perspectives. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2014, pp. 255-279. Derichs, Claudia (2004): “Malasia: Política y modernidad islámica [Malaysia: Politics and Islamic Modernity],” in: Baglioni, Sebastián D./Juan Ignacio Piovani (eds.): El sudeste asiático. Una visión contemporánea [Southeast Asia. A Contemporary View]. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, S. 69-95.
Unit 4:
Derichs, Claudia & Mark R. Thompson (2013): Introduction; Derichs, Claudia (2013): Conclusion; both in: Claudia Derichs & Mark R: Thompson (eds.): Dynasties and Female Political Leaders in Asia. Gender, Power and Pedigree. Berlin et al.: LIT, pp. 11-26 / 381-86.
Unit 5:
Tho Seeth, Amanda (2021): "Indonesian Islamic Academia as a Transregional Political Actor: Understanding Global Agency through Local History"; forthcoming in: Knorr, Lina et al (eds.): Local Perspectives on Global Issues. A transregional reader. World Scientific, 2021, forthcoming. Note: unpublished chapter, do not cite or disseminate
Unit 6:
Gottowik, Volker (2010): Transnational, translocal, transcultural: Some remarks on the relations between Hindu-Balinese and Ethnic Chinese in Bali. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 25(2): 178-212.
Unit 7:
Leow, Rachel (2016): in: Leow, Rachel: Taming Babel: Language in the Making of Malaysia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Unit 9:
Lücking, M. (2021). Breaching Boundaries in Muslim and Christian Tourism from Indonesia to Israel and Palestine. TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1-16. doi:10.1017/trn.2021.12
Unit 11:
Müller, D. M. (2015). Islamic Politics and Popular Culture in Malaysia: Negotiating normative change between shariah law and electric guitars; in: Indonesia and the Malay World 43(127), 318-344.
Unit 13:
Articles or film clips for each group of actors are provided in advance for small groups of students who then search on their own for additional material, data, and sources.

Constant feed back on text discussions and on the results of group work.

Presentations by the professor, discussion of texts, analytica excercises and group work.

English

FOR FURTHER READING
Unit 2:
Owen, Norman G. (ed. 2014): Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian History. London and New York: Routledge; Wang Gungwu (ed. 2005): Nation-Building. Five Southeast Asian Histories. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Unit 3:
Rüland, Jürgen (2006): Southeast Asia: New Research Trends in Political Science and International Relations; in: Journal of Southeast Asian Affairs 25(4): 83-107. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-337213 (open access); Huang, Xiaomin and Jason Young (2017): Politics in Asia Pacific. An Introduction. 2nd edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan; Kuhonta, Erik Martinez, Dan Slater and Tong Vu (eds. 2008): Southeast Asia in Political Science. Theory, Region and Qualitative Analysis. Stanford. Stanford University Press.
Unit 4:
Rüland, Jürgen et al. (2005): Parliaments and Political Change in Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; Ziegenhain, Patrick (2008): The Indonesian Parliament and Democratization. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies;
Unit 5:
Allès, D., & Tho Seeth, A. (2021). From Consumption to Production: The Extroversion of Indonesian Islamic Education. TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1-17. doi:10.1017/trn.2021; Shamsul, Amri Baharuddin and Azmi Aziz: Colonial Knowledge and the Reshaping of Islam, the Muslim and Islamic Education in Malaysia; in: Kamaruzzaman Bustamam-Ahmad & Patrick Jory (eds. 2011): Islamic Thought in Southeast Asia: New Interpretations and Movements. Kuala Lumpur: The University of Malaya Press, pp. 113-35.
Unit 6:
Freitag, Ulrike, and Achim Von Oppen. Translocality: the study of globalising processes from a southern perspective. Brill, 2010; Rother, Stefan (2020): Migration Governance through Transnational Connectivity? The Asian Inter-Parliamentary Caucus on Labour Migration. Freiburg, Arnold Bergstraesser Institute. Occasional paper No. 46. [download from: https://www.southeastasianstudies.uni-freiburg.de/publications-1/occasional-paper-series-southeast-asian-studies-at-freiburg ]; Middell, Matthias (ed. 2018): The Routledge Handbook of Transregional Studies. London & New York: Routledge.
Unit 7:
Guan, L. H., & Suryadinata, L. (Eds.). (2007). Language, Nation and Development in Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; Low, Ee-Ling, & Azirah Hashim (eds. 2012): English in Southeast Asia: Features, policy and language in use. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
Unit 9:
Bruckmayr, Philipp (2006): The Cham Muslims of Cambodia: From Forgotten Minority to Focal Point of Islamic Internationalism, in: American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 23(3), 1-23; Bruckmayr, Philipp (2019): Cambodia’s Muslims and the Malay World: Malay Language, Jawi Script, and Islamic Factionalism from the 19th Century to the Present. Leiden: Brill.
Unit 11:
Clammer, John (2003): Globalisation, class, consumption and civil society in South-East Asian cities, in: Urban Studies 40(2): 403-419; Yeoh, Brenda S.A. (2004): Cosmopolitanism and its exclusions in Singapore, in: Urban Studies 41(12): 2431-2445; Fischer, J. (2016). Islamic Mobility: Car culture in Modern Malaysia, in: Journal of Consumer Culture 16(2): 572-591

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This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development