Southeast Asian Studies: Society

Abstract

Southeast Asia is both real and imagined. It is real in terms of its physicality and the people that populate the region. It is imagined because it is cited in documents and texts that form a corpus of knowledge regarding the society and environment of the region accumulated from the earliest of available records on leaves to the latest digitalized form. In sum, this knowledge is Southeast Asian studies, constituted from accounts about its society and environment. This knowledge is organized along a baseline, indeed a continuum between ‘plurality’ at one end to ‘plural society’ on the other. Both ‘plurality’ and ‘plurality society’ are terms that describe the two different processes of social formation as well as types of society forms within Southeast Asian before and after the arrival of the Europeans in the fifteenth century. The consolidation of ‘plural society’ in Southeast Asia led to the organization of knowledge about societies within the region into nation–states hence the development of nation–state based studies, such as Indonesian studies, Thai studies, and so on. Therefore, the production and reproduction process of knowledge about Southeast Asia became increasingly detailed but highly compartmentalized hence the complex system of organization that is involved. This in turn shapes the pattern of the consumption of knowledge about Southeast Asia, both within and outside Southeast Asia. Because of the regions' ability to survive in adverse socioeconomic conditions has further increased interest in the social dynamics of its societies hence Southeast Asian studies.