Continuity and Change: (Re)conceptualising Power in Southeast Asia Conference 26-28 March 2009 University of Cambridge, UK

Registration is now open for the "Continuity and Change: (Re)conceptualising Power in Southeast Asia Conference" at Cambridge University.

The study of power in contemporary South-east 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 the region, there seems to be little specifically South-east Asian about contemporary scholarly analyses.

This is both puzzling and ironic given the central role that earlier
ethnographic studies of South-east Asia once played in Identifying
distinctively regional modalities of power, prompting us to reconsider how 'power' could be most profitably studied in South-east Asian contexts.

Continuity and Change will be a major interdisciplinary and International conference on South-east 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 'South-east 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 South-east 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 'South-east Asia' as a geographical, political and analytical entity in dealing with these issues?

Keynote Speakers:

James Scott (Political Science, Yale)
Introducing "Zomia": Site of the Last Great Enclosure Movement of
(relatively) Stateless Peoples in Mountainous Southeast Asia

Shelly Errington (Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz)
Cosmic Centers and the Subject of the 21st Century

Film screening: Terlena: the Breaking of a Nation, http://www.millache.org/
Andre Vltchek (Filmmaker and Political Commentator)

From 26 Mar 2009
Until 28 Mar 2009
Cambridge, United Kingdom
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