[governance-vn] Cambridge, UK, 24-28 March 2009: 'Continuity and Change: (Re)conceptualising Power in Southeast Asia'

[Vern Weitzel]

Event dates: Thursday, 26th March 2009 15:00 PM to Saturday, 28th March 2009 
18:00 PM

Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom Contact: Administrator Account
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'Continuity and Change: (Re)conceptualising Power in Southeast Asia'
People
Cambridge, UK - ‘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.
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 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
Associated websites:
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/542