Context and Method in Southeast Asian Politics

Abstract

This essay introduces and evaluates a central debate about context sensitivity in Southeast Asian political studies. Within this diverse field, there is no agreement about what context means, or how to be sensitive to it. I develop the idea of unit context (traditionally, the area studies concern) and population context (traditionally, the comparative politics concern) as parallel organizing principles in Southeast Asian political studies. The unit context/population context distinction does not track the now-familiar debates of qualitative versus quantitative analysis, nor debates about positivist epistemology and its interpretivist alternatives, nor even political science versus area studies. Context is not method, nor epistemology, nor discipline. Rather, the core distinction between unit-focused and population-focused research lies in assumptions about the possibility of comparison, or what methodologists call unit homogeneity. While I conclude on an optimistic note that a diverse Southeast Asian political studies (embracing many disciplines and many methodologies) is possible, the fact remains that unit context and population context are fundamentally incommensurate as frameworks for approaching Southeast Asian politics, and that population context is the superior approach. This essay discusses context and method in Southeast Asian political studies as understood by two academic communities: Southeast Asia area studies and mainstream comparative politics. Scholars working in each academic community commonly hold that research in the other tradition is insufficiently attentive to context. The natural consequences that arise from this lack of “context sensitivity” are that research on Southeast Asian politics is at best trivial, and at worse incorrect. For both communities, the only remedy for the failings of the other’s research is “more attention to context.” Complaints about context sensitivity are rarely seen in print. Instead, they are made informally, over coffee between likeminded colleagues, in the halls of the Association of Asian Studies annual meeting, and in seminar presentations and referee reports—the hidden transcripts of debates about theory, place, and methodology in contemporary Southeast Asian political