Methodology and Research Practice in Southeast Asian Studies

M. Huotari, J. Rüland, J. Schlehe, M. Huotari, J. Rüland, J. Schlehe

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137397539
• eBook ISBN: 9781137397546
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Business
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book addresses the question of how to ground research practice in area-specific, yet globally entangled contexts such as 'Global Southeast Asia'. It offers a fruitful debate between various approaches to Southeast Asia Studies, while taking into consideration the area-specific contexts of research practice cross-cutting methodological issues.

Part I

1

Moving Theory and Methods in Southeast Asian Studies

Goh Beng-Lan

1. Introduction

Recent discussions on the decentralization of knowledge production have yielded a refreshing shift away from a preoccupation with the limitations of Western discourse to endeavors in pluralizing critical knowledge structures. Revisionist area studies are at the forefront of these debates—a development that is not surprising as area studies have actively sought to transform themselves since coming under attack by the critique of Orientalism and changing institutional politics in the North American academe at the end of the Cold War. This began with the search for “afterlives” of area studies where regional scholarship was identified as a viable site for the denaturalization of Euro-American centric visions (Harootunian 2002, 150–74). More recently, a discourse on “Asia as Method” has emerged from the rethinking of non-Western regions. Advanced by the Taiwanese scholar Chen Kuan-Hsing (2010), “Asia as Method” proposes an “inter-referencing” of social-historical experiences and meanings in Asian contexts as a methodology to build alternate social scientific vocabularies/categories.¹

A quick qualification of my understanding of methodology is pertinent before elaborating on “Asia as Method.” To my mind, methodology is inseparable from epistemology and both are integral components of the social research process. Yet each is distinct from the other. The word epistemology, which originates from the Greek word episteme, often refers to the philosophy of how we come to know the world. Methodology, however, is more commonly used when referring to a body of procedures, techniques and rules in the knowledge gathering process. These common assumptions influenced my definitions of epistemology and methodology in this chapter. I will use epistemology to refer to the philosophical, political-theoretical, or if you will, conceptual or discursive dimensions of knowledge making. And by methodology, I mean practical or technical aspects of knowledge production. As an instrumental vehicle, there is room for flexibility and experimentation in methodology so as to develop comprehensive understandings of social phenomena. Indeed, methodological innovations are essential to inductive approaches in knowledge production where method and theory are modified and made to respond to empirical imperatives. Its flexible quality renders methodology with an important mediatory role in bringing theory and reality into alignment. In other words, methodological invention can help fill gaps between existing and emerging knowledge. Needless to say, how theory and method mutually define each other and a chosen conceptual framework will bear impact on the kind of methodology used in a particular research.

“Asia as Method” must hence be understood as a conceptual-cum-methodological quest aimed at defining distinctive socio-historical experiences and meanings in Asian societies. Rather than prescribing an Asian exclusionism, its aspiration is to decenter and diversify knowledge production by “inter-referencing,” comparing and learning from transnational intersections, interactions and circulation of history and ideas across Asian societies. Central to Chen’s argument in “Asia as Method” is that while history, meanings and analytical categories in Asian societies may originate from and are inevitably interconnected to the West, a comparative study of their particular unfolding across different Asian contexts may help scholars capture analytical registers, social categories and meanings that depart from Western ones. I would add that it is not enough for (Southeast) Asianists to learn from Asian contexts but that we must be open to learning from all regions of the globe. As Talal Asad (1993) has famously argued, if scholars want to understand the non-West they will have to first understand the West. Only by being intellectually curious and allowing ourselves to learn from comparisons of social phenomena across different countries and regions in the world can we move knowledge forward.

In a recent work (Goh 2011a), I used intellectual biographies of Southeast Asian scholars, which arose from a workshop on local dimensions of Southeast Asian studies, to present an instance of dialogue, comparison and elaboration among regional scholars as a means to decenter and diversify knowledge production on the region. Intentionally departing from the squabbles over disciplinary versus anti-disciplinary and insider versus outsider definitions of Southeast Asia, this work focuses instead on a longue-durée picture of disciplinary and epistemological practices within regional institutions in order to explore how gaps between existing and emerging knowledge on the region are addressed. The compiled narratives of regional humanities and social science practices (henceforth shortened as “human sciences”) show an undeniable influence of Western disciplinary and epistemology-cum-methodology traditions. This effect is prevalent even in countries where the human sciences are conducted in vernacular languages. Yet, despite the operations of a generic Western human science, there are distinct dimensions to human science practices within the region. Distinctions are produced when scholars are confronted by the disjuncture between theory and socio-political reality and are forced to move beyond the conventions of human science practices.

As I argued before, as much as newer critical norms are warranted in reforming Euro-American models of area studies, it would be a mistake to presume their universal relevance to other formulations outside the West (Goh 2011b, 8–9). This is because, despite entwinements with Euro-American traditions, other academic paradigms outside Western settings are inevitably embedded in different temporalities that may require different sets of critical interventions. When executed outside the West, critical knowledge structures, no matter how advanced and well-intended, may not be sufficient for comprehending local realities. In a complicated world, a contextualization of knowledge is needed. Knowledge production requires us to hold no foreclosures to different ways of seeing and knowing. We can only do justice to our encounters with the unknown by always keeping our preconceptions about theory and method in check. The real test to such radical openness lies however in the readiness to accept atypical thinking which may overturn even the most advanced critical norms. Nevertheless, the gap between existing and emerging knowledge can only be met when we are prepared to accept a pluralization of critical knowledge structures if we are sincere in the effort to decentralize knowledge production. As the Austrian scholar Andre Gingrich (2010, 552–62) has argued, the future of the human sciences should be geared towards building transnational rather than international brands of knowledge that emphasize engagements across various national boundaries.

In this chapter, I will focus on imperatives for methodological and epistemological interventions in the study of contemporary Southeast Asia. In particular, I discuss teaching and empirical imperatives that compel scholars living and practicing in Southeast Asia to innovate methodological approaches that can better push epistemological frontiers on the region. While a ring fencing of regional practices smacks of a revocation of insider-outsider divides, my aim is not about claiming accuracy or authority of regional scholarship. Rather it is about underscoring knowledge production as being shaped by different subject/political positions. By this I do not mean that we can reduce all knowledge/cultural differences to political instrumentality alone. Cultural difference is to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, even if we were to insist that difference is irreducibly ontological, our role as scholars is to find ways to access and translate such differences. Culture/knowledge is inevitably about people and their existence. Distinctive dimensions of each society can never be grasped by our highbrow theories or disciplinary frameworks alone. They require both intellectual and experiential engagement with the embodied ways through which people deal with the world around them. Regional scholarship has a responsibility to explicate lived realities and struggle towards the emancipation of subdued knowledge rather than taking delineations arising from elsewhere as formulae for defining the region. In other words, it has to strive towards filling the gaps between existing and emerging knowledge. In order to bridge knowledge breaks, regional scholars must develop creative methodologies which can help make better sense of regional realities. An enterprise to define the strange and unfamiliar will require us to be open to old and new ways of practising the human sciences as well as learn from methods and data produced in studies of comparable phenomena occurring in other parts of the world.

2. Methodology and knowledge gaps

The study of human societies is a project which cannot be divorced from social, existential and historical contexts as well as scholarly ethical commitments, whether on an individual or a collective basis, to comprehend social-political dilemmas that beset societies and regions. The virtue of a post-foundational human science is the acknowledgement that there can no longer be a monopoly of analytical procedures nor social truths. Knowledge making is a diverse, collective and decentered exercise. A decentering and diversification of knowledge production will have to provide room for reconciliation with different rationalizations of the social, political and transcendental. In the often deeply divided societies of Southeast Asia where public spheres are oversaturated by binary opinions, we may have to look underneath the surface of things to obtain nuanced rationalizations of society and human action. Capturing the indirect, the silent and/or sometimes peculiar may require us to concoct a combination of traditional and new methods which can yield more effective ways of understanding the role, collaborations, visions and experiences of human actors within their historical contexts of embedment. We need to step outside of our traditional methodological boxes and invent original techniques which can better assess how people cope with and try to find their ways out of fragile, fragmentary and indecipherable states of social life. Here, we can benefit from cutting-edge methodologies emerging from vibrant interdisciplinary fields such as cultural, environment, science and technology, new media, aesthetics and film studies. Not bounded by the scope of any one discipline or by any geographical delimitation, such interdisciplinary fields have generated newfound analytical procedures and objects of studies and helped overturn some past conceptions about society and human action. The interdisciplinary vision and endeavor in these recent fields may be instructive for area studies practitioners.

As an example, in order to amend the lag between theory and social phenomena, we may pay heed to the recommendation by cultural studies scholar Akbar Abbas that we practice “poor theory” as a method. Specifically addressing the theoretical lags behind urban transformations in Asia, Abbas (2008, 1) defines “poor theory” as “neither a clear method nor an absence of method, but a method when we glimpse when we struggle with the anomalous details that don’t fit into a reading. Such a method produces typically not a reading of a text, but the text of a reading.” What he is suggesting is for a change of mind-sets as well as techniques and mediums through which we do our analyses. In particular when social phenomena cannot be directly observed, we may have to redirect our attention to its effects and distortions on other avenues and mediums of social expression. Using the Asian city, Abbas makes this clear in the following statement:

Though images cannot capture the city directly, this does not prevent the city from seeping into images when they are not looking. Or to put this another way, the city cannot be observed directly, but it can be deduced from the effects and distortions it produces; effects and distortions that we call cinema, architecture, design, new media, and so on. All these cultural practices can also—should also—be thought of as parapraxes: something like slips of the tongue or other inadvertent mistakes that provide evidence for the existence of what cannot be made evident: a spatial unconscious (Abbas 2008, 2).

In line with this spirit of intellectual openness, I will use pedagogical imperatives and recent religious phenomena in Southeast Asia as two grounds to explore methodological intervention from regional practices of Southeast Asian studies. As I will demonstrate, pedagogical and empirical challenges equally cut into knowledge production as they compel methodological versatility and inevitably reconstitute theory.

3. Pedagogical innovations from regional models

Southeast Asian studies had late beginnings in the region of its study. It was only since the 1990s, at a time when area studies was experiencing a decline in Euro-America that we saw a flourishing of Southeast Asian studies departments and research institutes within Southeast Asia (Goh 2011b, 33–5). It is important to note that this later spread and consolidation of Southeast Asian studies as distinct academic programs in the region happened at a time of disciplinary and theoretical flux in the wider human sciences. This backdrop provided a more conducive environment for interdisciplinary pursuits when compared with the experience of area studies in North America. Another distinctive feature of Southeast Asian studies departments in the region is their institutional autonomy. Many of them offer both undergraduate and graduate degree programs and have the ability to recruit their own staff. This trend departs from the North American model where area studies are often subordinated to traditional disciplinary departments for purposes of faculty appointment, promotion and the admission of PhD students.² Having its own institutional autonomy has meant that the field of Southeast Asian studies has more leeway to consolidate itself like any other traditional disciplinary department.

Despite organizational autonomy, as a field constituted by a variety of disciplinary practices, Southeast Asian studies in the region are not free from the quandary over the lack of coherence in theory and method. In its post-Second World War American model, Southeast Asian studies function merely as an assemblage of different disciplines but not as an autonomous (post-)discipline in itself.³ Inevitably, inheriting Euro-American legacies, questions abound in regional models over whether the field is merely multi- rather than interdisciplinary, that is, a mere gathering rather than a unity of disciplinary practices. Disciplinary uncertainty also means theoretical and methodological ambiguity. Akin to Euro-American models of area studies, the lack of coherent theoretical and methodological frameworks similarly haunts regional models. Questions abound over whether it would be possible for Southeast Asian studies to forge interdisciplinary approaches. Even if interdisciplinary integration is the ideal, questions still arise as to whether there can be a true blend of interdisciplinary approaches where no one single disciplinary influence stands out. Or should we be content with a minimalist approach by anchoring research on a single disciplinary framework but drawing upon other disciplinary conventions for enhancements? Could a truly interdisciplinary approach along with a coherent set of theoretical and methodological strategies be really feasible?

Let me explore ways to address these intellectual predicaments by using my own experience of teaching at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. I will begin with qualms faced by honors or final year Southeast Asian studies majoring students when they prepare for their research project. Honors students at my university have the option of writing a thesis for their graduation. These students encounter typical problems that any social researcher faces at the beginning of research projects. Central amongst these is the need to know what kinds of epistemological and methodological frameworks will be useful to their subjects of study. When compared to disciplinary majors, Southeast Asian studies students have the liberty of selecting from a variety of disciplinary frameworks. Yet such freedom is also somewhat confusing for them. I discovered this when I first joined the department and was asked to lecture on a section on anthropology and ethnographic methods for a module, “Theory and Practice in Southeast Asian Studies,” which prepares honors students for their thesis research. This module was partitioned into various disciplinary sections, introducing students to historical, political, cultural-linguistic and anthropological approaches. The partitioning of this module into different human and social science approaches, I was told, had long been a practice at the program. Its aim was to expose students to different disciplinary approaches and leave things open for them to choose whatever perspective they deemed best for their work. Yet from students’ feedback, it was obvious that apart from the linguistic delineations of an area studies approach, they found it hard to decide on what would be an appropriate framework for their research. Students were often confused about the links between the disciplines and Southeast Asian studies. I eventually realized that the teaching structure of the module was reflective of a post-Second World War American imagination of area studies as an assemblage of different disciplines but not an autonomous (post)discipline in itself. As existing debates provide no clear answers to these theoretical and methodological dilemmas, there may be justified grounds for a Southeast Asian studies department located within the region of its study to foster pedagogic directions that are responsive to local/regional conditions and imperatives.

I decided to revise the “Theory and Practice” module according to what I could best offer my students. I first began by using anthropological approaches—which I was most familiar with—as a base upon which to build “interdisciplinary” perspectives on the study of Southeast Asia. My early syllabus was divided into two main sections. The first provided students with an idea of how Southeast Asian studies could be defined by exploring its intellectual genealogies in both Western and non-Western academia as well as how the field has been impacted by disciplinary developments in Western human sciences. The second introduced selected texts/studies which display both “disciplinary” as well as “interdisciplinary” approaches to the study of generic divisions of political economy, history and culture in Southeast Asia so as to enable students to identify and compare the effectiveness of different approaches. Student responses over time suggest that an overview of the history of the field in both Western and non-Western settings and an examination of its relationship with traditional disciplines provide useful bases for them to figure out parameters of as well as new possibilities in Southeast Asian studies. I have continued to depart from this starting point when I teach this module even of late. Such an introduction makes clear that an enterprise to define the “local” will require a simultaneous engagement with the geopolitics of knowledge production and specific intellectual and institutional histories behind the development of the human sciences in both the West and the region. By emphasizing a simultaneous interrogation of geo-political differences and “localized” factors that shape the human sciences in and between the West and the region, moments of the highly “local” in the constitution of the human sciences are better revealed and assumptions about universality scrutinized. Such an overview sets the stage for awareness about the relevance of concepts and methodologies when applied to particular experiences of time, cultural realities and modes of thought found in Southeast Asia; modes that are supposedly specific to the region but at the same time entwined with larger histories.

Beyond intellectual and institutional history, I see the importance of training students of area studies in basic social science research methods. Hence, a section on social research methodology is later added on to the syllabus where students learn about the logical structure of inquiry and basic processes of social scientific research. Like other disciplinary majors, students of Southeast Asian studies should learn how to distinguish between d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on the Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Fostering Methodological Dialogue in Southeast Asian Studies
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Bibliography
• Index