Author: Alex Felipe

Le français suit

Call for Expressions of Interest 

The Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies (CCSEAS) is seeking candidates from Canadian post-secondary institutions for the following volunteer roles. All roles are for a two-year term (October 2021 to October 2023). 

1) President 

The President and their institution would also host the 2023 CCSEAS biennial conference, with support from the CCSEAS Secretariat. Aside from the conference, responsibilities will be limited but we do hope to continue to grow the organization and its activities, with the support of the Executive Committee. 

2) Executive Committee members 

We are seeking four faculty member and two graduate students. We have biennial meeting and your ideas and participation in the revitalization of CCSEAS will be key to its growth. The Executive Committee is supported by the CCSEAS Secretariat.  

We welcome members from the same institution—or neighbouring institutions—who might jointly host the conference.  

If you are interested, please email a statement of interest (500 words max.) and CV to ccseas@yorku.ca by Wednesday, 13 October 2021. 

A vote will take place at the General Meeting at the 2021 conference. 

Questions can be directed to ccseas@yorku.ca 

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Appel à manifestation d’intérêt 

Le Conseil canadien des études sur l’Asie du Sud-Est (CCEASE) est à la recherche de candidats provenant d’établissements postsecondaires canadiens pour les rôles bénévoles suivants. Ces rôles comprennent un mandat de deux ans (d’octobre 2021 à octobre 2023). 

1) Président 

Avec l’appui du Secrétariat du CCEASE, le président et son établissement seront chargés d’accueillir la conférence biennale du CCEASE en 2023. Mis à part la conférence, les responsabilités seront limitées, mais le comité exécutif espère tout de même collaborer avec le président afin de développer l’organisation et ses activités. 

2) Membres du comité exécutif 

Nous cherchons quatre membres du corps professoral et deux étudiants diplômés pour joindre notre comité exécutif. Nous tiendrons une réunion bisannuelle dans laquelle vos idées et votre participation à la revitalisation du CCEASE seront essentielles à sa croissance. Il est à noter que le comité exécutif est soutenu par le secrétariat du CCEASE.  

Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir les membres d’une même institution — ou d’institutions voisines — qui pourraient conjointement tenir la conférence.  

Si vous êtes intéressé, veuillez envoyer une déclaration d’intérêt (500 mots maximum) et un CV à ccseas@yorku.ca avant le mercredi 13 octobre 2021. 

Un vote aura lieu lors de l’assemblée générale de la conférence de 2021. 

Les questions peuvent être adressées à ccseas@yorku.ca   

We are pleased to announce Oona Paredes (UCLA) and Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung (University of Massachusetts Lowell) as our keynote speakers this year.

Thawnghmung Ardeth Maung is Professor and Chair of Political Science Department at University of Massachusetts Lowell.  She was born and raised in Myanmar and is a member of Karen ethnic group. Her areas of specialization are on Myanmar/Southeast Asian politics, ethnic politics, and political economy. Her most recent book is Everyday Economic Survival in Myanmar (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Her forthcoming book, “Winning by Process: The State and Neutralization of Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar” (Cornell University Press), is a collaboration with Canadian academics Jacques Bertrand (University of Toronto) and Alexandre Pelletier (Cornell University). She has written numerous books and articles on ethnic politics in Myanmar, with particular emphasis on the evolution of center-peripheral relationships, the role of non-armed minority populations, the divisions within minority ethnic populations, and the implications of democracy on ethnic conflicts. Her Thursday, 21 October talk is titled “Academic Research in Post-coup Myanmar: Challenges in Ethics, Values, Safety, and Best Practices.”

Oona Paredes is a Southeast Asianist specializing in the ethnographic and archival study of the southern Philippines, in particular its indigenous non-Muslim minorities known collectively as the Lumad. Her Sunday, 24 October talk is titled “The Pandemic as Social Movement in Pericolonial Southeast Asia.”

We’ve extended the deadline to Friday, 8 October and we look forward to receiving your submissions!

A CCSEAS/CCSEASE 2021 special event hosted virtually by the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI), University of Victoria.

We are delighted to host a virtual networking and idea-exchange workshop for graduate students from all disciplines who are working on topics related to Southeast Asia. This workshop will open the conference on Thursday, 21 October 2021 from 10:00–11:30 PST via Zoom.

Participants in this workshop will have an opportunity to meet fellow graduate students and other scholars working in their area and exchange ideas on their research in an interdisciplinary way. All graduate students registered for the conference are invited to participate. The price of admission is: (a) the submission of a one-paragraph (@ 250-word) abstract of your thesis and (b) a commitment to reading two other abstracts before the conference and providing, at the workshop, one page of suggested readings, questions, and comments to your fellow participants. The workshop will involve a blend of plenary and breakout sessions.   

Please send your abstract, along with a short (@ 150-word) biography, to ccseas@yorku.ca by 8 October 2021. A limited number of spaces will be made available for this workshop on a first-come, first-served basis to students who have registered for the conference.

Questions can be directed to Dr. Victor V. Ramraj at ramraj@uvic.ca.

Registration is now open! Please click here.

Vous pouvez maintenant vous inscrire à la conférence! Veuillez cliquer ici!

The most updated version of the conference program is available here.

La programme de la conférence est maintenant disponible ! Accédez-y ici!

Merci à tous! Nous avons reçu plus de 100 soumissions. Le comité organisateur local de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique est en train de créer un horaire.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a paper abstract, panel submission or proposed a roundtable, poster or screening! We received over 100 submissions, which are being organized into a schedule by the local organizing committee at the University of British Columbia. We will be in touch with everyone who submitted soon.

le français suit  

Dear CCSEAS Members and Friends:

We hope you are staying sane, safe and healthy during these exceptional times.

We know how difficult it can be to plan ahead when we are dealing with many urgent, day-to-day matters.

Our resolve to push and plan ahead for our CCSEAS Conference at UBC helps us gain some normalcy in our lives.

As we achieve near universal vaccination by the end of summer, we hope that the October CCSEAS at UBC-Vancouver will be our first in-person conference to attend.

We have received 42 abstract submissions, including three panels. We would like to increase these numbers by asking for your submissions and help in circulating the CCSEAS Conference information to your students, including senior undergraduates, who might have recently completed or ongoing research projects for presentation at the conference.

You can access the Call for Papers here.

We are extending the deadline to 30 April 2021 to give you more chance to send us your paper abstracts and panel submissions. Proposals can be submitted here.  

Warm regards,
Nora and Kai

Nora Angeles and Kai Ostwald

Organizing Committee, CCSEAS/CCEASE 2021 Conference
University of British Columbia

Chers.ères membres et amis.es du CCEASE :

Nous espérons que vous restez sain d’esprit, en sécurité et en bonne santé pendant ces périodes exceptionnelles.

Nous savons à quel point il peut être difficile de planifier lorsque nous traitons de nombreuses questions urgentes quotidiennement.

Notre détermination à faire avancer et à planifier la conférence du CCEASE à UBC nous aide à retrouver une certaine normalité dans nos vies.

Alors que nous atteindrons la vaccination presque universelle d’ici la fin de l’été, nous espérons que la conférence du CCEASE prévue cet octobre à UBC-Vancouver sera notre première occasion de participer à une conférence en personne depuis le début de pandémie.

Nous avons reçu 42 soumissions de résumés, dont trois panels. Nous aimerions faire augmenter ces chiffres en vous demandant de bien vouloir nous faire parvenir vos soumissions, ainsi que votre aide à diffuser les informations de la conférence du CCEASE à vos étudiants.es, y compris ceux et celles à la fin du premier cycle, qui auraient récemment terminé ou ont des projets de recherche en cours pouvant être présentés à la conférence.

L’appel à soumissions est ici.

Nous reportons ainsi la date limite au 30 avril 2021 afin de vous donner plus de temps pour nous envoyer vos résumés. Veuillez soumettre votre proposition ici. 

Meilleures salutations,

Nora et Kai

Nora Angeles et Kai Ostwald

Comité d’organisation, CCEASE 2021  
Université de la Colombie-Britannique

Southeast Asia-related events
If you are organizing or know of an upcoming event related to Southeast Asia or the diaspora that you would like us to share, please let us know! Tag us on Twitter: @CCSEAS_CCEASE or or email us the details: ccseas@yorku.ca

Événements sur l’Asie du Sud-Est 
Si vous organisez ou prenez connaissance d’un événement lié à l’Asie du Sud-Est ou sa diaspora et que vous souhaitez que nous diffusions l’information, n’hésitez pas à nous contacter!Vous pouvez nous identiqueter sur Twitter: @CCSEAS_CCEASE ou nous envoyer les détails par courriel: ccseas@yorku.ca

It is an understatement to say we live in unprecedented and highly uncertain times.  

The combined impacts of catastrophic climate changes, both sudden and incremental, and increasing social and economic inequalities, have long been hurting Southeast Asian communities, and other people around the world, long before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In a short span of less than six months, the pandemic has exposed systemic structural vulnerabilities, injustices and inequities in our life support systems—our health care, food supply chains, childcare, schools, universities, manufacturing industries, physical and social infrastructures—as well as our countries’ and regions’ increased interconnections and interdependencies. It has also exposed how emergent populist authoritarian rulers in Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, stoke long-standing fears and persistent prejudices with pandemic-related emergency powers as “perfect pretext” or cover for increased repression of their citizens, greater political manipulation, or power concentration. 

Much of what is happening in the Southeast Asian region and the wider world today with the Covid-19 pandemic is deeply connected with the kinds of issues and concerns that CCSEAS scholars have long engaged with since its creation.

CCSEAS scholars have studied class structures and relations in SEA beyond the “three great classes” of peasants, workers and landed capitalists. They have fine-tuned mainstream capital, peasant, labour, political, development and resource studies by linking their analyses to broader challenges—including pandemics, disasters, urban insurrections and rural insurgencies—that cause severe social cleavages, economic dislocations, regime transitions, and intergenerational conflicts. They have connected urban, peri-urban and rural development concerns with governmentality approaches and roles of states, non-government, international financial agencies, and governance at various scales, magnified by resource constraints, legitimation crises, ecological stresses, and political emergencies. 

They have taken up the challenge of examining “economic miracles,” “economic crises” and the political economy of “state penetration,” “crony capitalism,” “neo-patrimonialism,” “corporatization,” “financialization” and “neoliberal globalization” over the years, concepts and practices that have been wedded to discourses on human rights, liberalism, good governance and democracy, whose futures and prospects in the Southeast Asian region, and elsewhere, have been complicated by the still-spreading global pandemic.

To continue its tradition of critical scholarship and mentoring of young Southeast Asian studies scholars in Canada, and being well positioned to tackle old and new challenges our fast changing societies confront regularly, the CCSEAS has been blessed with a new and younger Executive members: Kai Ostwald (UBC) as Vice-President, Isabelle Cote (Memorial) as Treasurer, Stéphanie Martel (Queen’s) as Member-at-Large,Antoine Beaulieu (U Laval), and Mallory MacDonnell (York) as student representatives, supported by Alicia Filipowich (York) and Jennifer Langill (McGill). I am the eldest on the team, having attended CCSEAS Conferences since the 1990s when I was still a graduate student. At these meetings, I had the great fortune of meeting many seasoned senior scholars who undoubtedly have played a big role in my own intellectual growth and professional development as an academic and researcher.

Led by these young leaders and graduate students across Canada, we will renew our CCSEAS commitment to critical and engaged scholarship with a conference theme “People, Power, Politics, Pandemics and Other Perils in Southeast Asia” to be held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver on 21–24 October 2021. 

We will monitor the public health situation next year to determine how our travel and logistical arrangements will be affected by the pandemic. We are prepared to hold the Conference in virtual and hybrid spaces should travel advisories and other essential precautionary measures be still in place. Please watch out for our conference poster, a  call for papers as well as Facebook and Twitter accounts with more details on how you can be involved in conference planning and preparations. Kindly get in touch with our CCSEAS Secretariat for more details.

We hope that the 2021 CCSEAS Conference will be your first post-pandemic conference of choice! Maraming Salamat. Mabuhay!

Leonora C. Angeles, President