Social Science Research Council

Local Scholarship and the Study of Southeast Asia: Bridging the Past and the Present

This program aims to explore the local dimensions of the rise of Southeast Asian scholarship since the 1950s and to bridge the gaps between past experience and the current production of knowledge about Southeast Asia. It is a result of two workshops, an SSRC planning workshop held in November 2002 in Singapore and a Toyota Foundation-funded workshop in Cebu, Philippines, in April 2003, which brought together local scholars from across Southeast Asia and across generations in order to look back at efforts to produce local knowledge in the region, and to generate clearer, more coherent, and integrated perspectives on the questions of theory and method for future scholarship within Southeast Asia.

Through a series of workshops, the program will investigate the genealogies of local scholarship in Southeast Asia, going back to the 1950s, and establish a dialogue and exchange between the "older" and the "younger" scholarship generations. The goal is to produce a better-informed, reflexive, responsible, and critical younger generation of scholars who will engage with, and expand on, the intellectual concerns and viewpoints posed by their predecessors. Organizers include Dr. Reynaldo C. Ileto, Professor and Head, Southeast Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore, and Dr. Goh Beng Lan, Consultant, Social Science Research Council, New York (Assistant Professor, Southeast Asian Studies Programme, NUS).