The Inseparability of Area and Discipline in Southeast Asian Studies: A View from the United States

Abstract

In this brief discussion of some trajectories of scholarship on Southeast Asia, I point to interrelationships of analytic models and regional features. The several major traditions of research on Southeast Asia have developed distinct models of the region, among others, Southeast Asia as Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms, as part of a Malayo-Polynesian ethnological space, and as part of the Muslim world. And yet, certain strong regional continuities have in turn shaped these models, among them (here I draw heavily from the works of O. Wolters, D. Lombard, and A. Reid), the relative equality of men and women, hierarchical reciprocity as an organizing principle of social life, and an opening up toward the outside world that lies at the core of Southeast Asian historical and cultural consciousness. Finally, I attempt to explain the specific analytical approach dominating United States study of the region, an approach that I label the historical anthropology of politics.