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In Defence of Southeast Asia: A Case for Methodological Regionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2013

Eric C. Thompson
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Abstract

Open nearly any general text on Southeast Asia and you will find that some space is taken up in the introduction assessing the reality and validity of the regional framework on which that text rests. Likewise, with the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), many scholars question whether or not the regional entity amounts to anything of any substance. In this article, I mount a defence of Southeast Asia as a regional framework in scholarship and draw attention to ASEAN as an evolving regional entity. While the concept of Southeast Asia among researchers and the politics of ASEAN are distinct issues, I treat them together in this article to highlight their interrelationship and parallels. My primary objective is to outline the displaced politics – of both academic and realpolitik varieties – embedded in deconstructive and dismissive critiques of both Southeast Asia and ASEAN. Critiques of both are not without value, as they sharpen our attention to processes through which supra-national regionalism is produced. Nevertheless, I argue that regionalism remains a valuable method in both politics and scholarship, in no small part as a counterweight to the hegemony of methodological nationalism in contemporary thought and research.

Keywords

ASEANSoutheast Asiaregionalismpoliticsmethodological nationalism
Type
Articles
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 1 , Special Issue 2: Redefining and Recontextualising Politics in Southeast Asia , July 2013 , pp. 281 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Institute of East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2013 

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