[Anthropgrad] Continuity and Change: (Re)conceptualising Power in Southeast Asia

[Cathy Day]

Forwarded on behalf of Holly High:  Holly.High at usyd.edu.au


Cathy Day
Anthropgrad List Admin


-----Original Message-----
From: N.J. Long [mailto:njl34 at cam.ac.uk] 
Sent: Saturday, 14 June 2008 10:45 PM
To: N.J. Long
Cc: sea.continuity.change at googlemail.com
Subject: CFP: Continuity and Change: (Re)conceptualising Power in
Southeast Asia

Dear colleagues,

Please find below a call for papers for a forthcoming conference on
power in Southeast Asia, to be hosted at the University of Cambridge
next March. 
A Microsoft Word version of this CFP is also attached.

I do hope it will be of interest to you, and please do circulate the CFP
to any colleagues or graduate students who might be interested.

With best wishes,
Nick Long


*****

CALL FOR PAPERS

'Continuity and Change: (Re)conceptualising Power in Southeast Asia'

March 26th-28th 2009
Hosted by CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and
Humanities), University of Cambridge, UK

Keynote Speakers:
James Scott (Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of
Anthropology, Yale University) Shelly Errington (Professor of
Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz)

The study of power in contemporary Southeast Asia has never been more
timely. Over the last half-century, the region has undergone innumerable
far-reaching changes. It has witnessed the rise of postcolonial
nation-states, rapid industrialization, economic growth and
democratization but also genocide, political upheaval and widespread
repression.  Power lies at the core of these important developments,
whether in the form of brute military force or as a more capillary
'disciplinary' influence on religious and political subjectivities. New
religious, economic and political movements-all drawing deeply on local
traditions while proposing new forms of personhood, civil and political
society-cut across national, cultural, ideological and sectarian
boundaries.

Yet for all that power can be detected in Southeast Asia, there seems to
be little specifically Southeast Asian about it in contemporary
scholarly analyses. This is both puzzling and ironic given the central
role that earlier ethnographic studies of Southeast Asia once played in
identifying distinctively regional modalities of power, prompting us to
reconsider how 'power' could be most profitably studied in Southeast
Asian contexts.

'Continuity and Change' will be a major interdisciplinary and
international conference on Southeast Asia. Its key aim is to reopen the
debate on the issue of 'power'-both in real life and academic
scholarship-as it is manifest across the region. Conference themes and
questions will include:

*	Are there, or were there ever, distinctly 'Southeast Asian'
notions 
of power that could still exist as alternatives-or complements-to
Western folk and political models?
*	Are scholars' analytic imaginaries of power in relation to
nationhood 
and governance congruent with the imaginaries of Southeast Asians
witnessing or involved in such projects and processes?
*	What are the shapes that power takes?
*	How have recent theoretical developments within various
disciplines 
reshaped our understanding of the nature and location of power?
*	How useful is the concept of 'Southeast Asia' as a geographical,

political and analytical entity in dealing with these issues?

We invite papers from scholars working in the arts, humanities and
social sciences whose research illuminates novel, exciting and
challenging dimensions of power in Southeast Asian contexts across space
and time.

Abstracts, 250 words in length, should be submitted to
sea.continuity.change at googlemail.com

For further details, see our website: 
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/542, or email us at the address
above.

Key dates:
Submission of Proposal: 1st October 2008 Announcement of accepted
proposals: 1st November 2008 Circulation of Paper Abstracts and Panels:
1st March 2009


Organizing Committee:
Liana Chua
Joanna Cook
Nick Long
Lee Wilson

University of Cambridge