Bridging Region and Discipline: Social Movement Studies and Southeast Asia II

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Regrettably, when Southeast Asian movements are examined, it is often uninformed by the social movement studies (SMS) literature. Focusing on the last decade of Southeast Asia, during which numerous dramatic popular protests emerged, this second session of a two-part panel continues to engage insights from SMS, facilitate comparative perspectives and encourage intra-region and border-crossing scholarly dialogue. Presenting on countries that have undergone notable political change or transition, this panel draws on different areas of SMS to explain the mobilisation processes and outcomes of grassroots contention. Deploying analytical tools of framing, political process, and emotions and identity, presenters examine a diverse array of protagonists and movements: the media and social movements in Burma, the peasant movements in Indonesia, the middle classes-led electoral reform movement in Malaysia, and the Red Shirts in Thailand. Just as the various approaches in SMS have sparked lively theoretical debates, the different perspectives in this panel will extend and contribute to these debates within the context of Southeast Asia. The integrationist approach, as utilised by the presenters, demonstrates the hope and potential of contributing to theory development and reinforcing the “synergy between region and discipline” (Kuhonta, Slater and Vu 2008).

Area of Study

• Southeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Wei Lit Yew, City University of Hong Kong

Chair

• James Buchanan, City University of Hong Kong

Individual Presentations

• Political Opportunities and Pro-Democracy Movements in Malaysia - Ying Hooi Khoo, University of Malaya

• Elite-Peasant Relations in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: Decentralization, Dispossession, and Countermovement - Iqra Anugrah, Northern Illinois University

• Seeing Red: Moral Outrage and the Making of a Red Shirt Identity - James Buchanan, City University of Hong Kong

• Understanding the Language of the ‘Freed': Social Movements in Post-2010 Myanmar - Tharaphi Than, NIU

Discussant

• Tuong Vu, University of Oregon