Localisation, regionalism and the history of ideas in Southeast Asia

Extract

Much analysis of Asian regional relations and institutions is written in an historical and cultural vacuum. The impression is often given that security or economic arrangements are comparable with physical structures — creations of engineers rather than social scientists (or even architects). The writings of Amitav Acharya, now Professor of International Affairs at American University in Washington, DC, are a distinguished exception. Already the author of major books on security architecture and community identity in Southeast Asia – including his Constructing a Community in Southeast Asia, which has just come out in a new edition – Acharya has produced a careful study of the diffusion of security ideas and norms in the Asian region, particularly Southeast Asia. He concentrates in particular on the establishing in Asia of the norm of ‘cooperative security’ (as against ‘common security’) and the institution of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). It is a study – dealing especially with the last half century or so – which draws not just on the historical record of Southeast Asia but also on the theoretical insights of historians of that region. Acharya is genuine in his cross-disciplinary endeavour, and, in my view, has developed a methodology that invites a response from historians as well as practitioners in his own field of security studies.