Author: James Clad Publisher: NDU Press ISBN: 1780399227 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
As an academic field in its own right, the topic of border studies is experiencing a revival in university geography courses as well as in wider political commentary. Until recently, border studies in contemporary Southeast Asia appeared as an afterthought at best to the politics of interstate rivalry and national consolidation. The maps set out all agreed postcolonial lines. Meanwhile, the physical demarcation of these boundaries lagged. Large slices of territory, on land and at sea, eluded definition or delineation. That comforting ambiguity has disappeared. Both evolving technologies and price levels enable rapid resource extraction in places, and in volumes, once scarcely imaginable. The beginning of the 21st century's second decade is witnessing an intensifying diplomacy, both state-to-state and commercial, over offshore petroleum. In particular, the South China Sea has moved from being a rather arcane area of conflict studies to the status of a bellwether issue. Along with other contested areas in the western Pacific and south Asia, the problem increasingly defines China's regional relationships in Asia, and with powers outside the region, especially the United States. Yet intraregional territorial differences also hobble multilateral diplomacy to counter Chinese claims, and daily management of borders remains burdened by a lot of retrospective baggage. The contributors to this book emphasize this mix of heritage and history as the primary leitmotif for contemporary border rivalries and dynamics. Whether the region's 11 states want it or not, their bordered identity is falling into ever sharper definition, if only because of pressure from extraregional states. This book aims to provide new ways of looking at the reality and illusion of bordered Southeast Asia.
Author: Sean McDonald Publisher: Smashbooks ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 278
Book Description
FROM THE AUTHORS: As an academic field in its own right, the topic of border studies is experiencing a revival in university geography courses as well as in wider political commentary. Of course, something about the postmodernist sensibility readily embraces the ambiguity, impermanence, transience, and twilight nature of bordered spaces among the planet's 192 territorially defined states. But we have another motivation in assembling this book, one rooted in contemporary rivalries sited in one of the world's most open regions. Until recently, border studies in contemporary Southeast Asia ap¬peared as an afterthought at best to the politics of interstate rivalry and national consolidation. The maps set out all agreed postcolonial lines. Meanwhile, the physical demarcation of these boundaries lagged. Large slices of territory, on land and at sea, eluded definition or delineation. That comforting ambiguity has disappeared. Both evolving tech¬nologies and price levels enable rapid resource extraction in places, and in volumes, once scarcely imaginable. The old adage that God really does have a sense of humor ("after all, look where He/She put the oil") holds as true in Southeast Asia as in the Middle East. The beginning of the 21st century's second decade is witnessing an intensifying diplomacy, both state-to-state and commercial, over off¬shore petroleum. In particular, the South China Sea has moved from being a rather arcane area of conflict studies to the status of a bellwether issue. Along with other contested areas in the western Pacific and south Asia, the problem increasingly defines China's regional relationships in Asia-and with powers outside the region, especially the United States. Yet intraregional territorial differences also hobble multilat¬eral diplomacy to counter Chinese claims. For the region's national governments, the window for submission and adjudication of maritime claims under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas marks a legal checkpoint, but daily management of borders remains burdened by retrospective baggage. The contributors to this book emphasize this mix of heritage and history as the primary leitmotif for contemporary border rivalries and dynamics. Whether the region's 11 states want it or not, their bor¬dered identity is falling into ever sharper definition-if only because of pressure from extraregional states. Chinese state and commercial power dovetails almost seamlessly with Beijing's formal territorial demands. Yet subregional rivalries and latent suspicions also remain firmly in place-as in those among Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, or between Thailand and those states that encircle the kingdom. Tracing back to its history of tributary states, the Chinese colossus has fixed views about all states contiguous to its territory; in some Chinese dialects, Vietnam is still referred to as a "renegade province." We chose to organize the chapters by country to elicit a broad range of thought and approach as much as for the specific areas or nation-states examined in each chapter. For both Southeast Asia and the outside world, the current era portends another unsettled period of border disputes and contentious territorial claims. Complex claims also have unsettled the Arctic and inland seas like the Caspian. The precision we laud in global positioning and tracking systems has also wreaked havoc on the apparent certainties bequeathed by all the carefully surveyed (at least by 19th-century standards) boundaries left behind by the departing colonial powers. Of course, these new uncertainties about the place on the terrain of exact map coordinates can probably remain safely unsettled for a long time-but only so long as no resource discoveries emerge, which can lift the problem from obscurity to prominence in the political equivalent of a heartbeat. Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University (NDU).
Author: Yuk Wah Chan Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351600958 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 116
Book Description
This book provides a glimpse into the different emergent borderland prototypes in East and Southeast Asia, with illustrative cases and discussions. Asia has contained a number of reactivated border zones since the end of the Cold War, borders which have witnessed ever greater human activity, concerning trade, commerce, tourism, and other forms of money-related activities such as shopping, gambling and job-seeking. Through seven borderland cases, the contributors to this volume analyse how the changing political economy and the regional and international politics of Asia have shaped and reshaped borderland relations and produced a few essential prototypes of borderland in Asia, such as reopened borders and re-activated economic zones; reintegrated but "separated" border cities; porous borderlands; and abstruse borderlands. This book aims to bring about further discussions of borderland development and governance, and how these actually inform and shape state-state and state-city relations across borders and regional politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Asian Anthropology.
Author: Enze Han Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0190688300 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
Is the process of state building a unilateral, national venture, or is it something more collaborative, taking place in the interstices between adjoining countries? To answer this question, Asymmetrical Neighbors takes a comparative look at the state building process along China, Myanmar, and Thailand's common borderland area. It shows that the variations in state building among these neighboring countries are the result of an interactive process that occurs across national boundaries. Departing from existing approaches that look at such processes from the angle of singular, bounded territorial states, the book argues that a more fruitful method is to examine how state and nation building in one country can influence, and be influenced by, the same processes across borders. It argues that the success or failure of one country's state building is a process that extends beyond domestic factors such as war preparation, political institutions, and geographic and demographic variables. Rather, it shows that we should conceptualize state building as an interactive process heavily influenced by a "neighborhood effect." Furthermore, the book moves beyond the academic boundaries that divide arbitrarily China studies and Southeast Asian studies by providing an analysis that ties the state and nation building processes in China with those of Southeast Asia.
Author: Alexander Horstmann Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 0857454390 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
In a completely new approach to borders and border crossing, this volume suggests a re-conceptualization of the nation in Southeast Asia. Choosing an actor approach, the individual chapters in this volume capture the narratives of minorities, migrants and refugees who inhabit and cross borders as part of their everyday life. They show that people are not only constrained by borders; the crossing of borders also opens up new options of agency. Making active use of these, border-crossing actors construct their own live projects on the border in multiple ways against the original intention of the nation-state. Based on their intimate knowledge of the interaction of communities, anthropologists from Europe, the USA, Japan and Southeast Asia provide a vivid picture of the effects of state policies at the borders on these communities.
Author: Alexander Horstmann Publisher: ISBN: 9781845455910 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
In a completely new approach to borders and border crossing, this volume suggests a re-conceptualization of the nation in Southeast Asia. Choosing an actor approach, the individual chapters in this volume capture the narratives of minorities, migrants and refugees who inhabit and cross borders as part of their everyday life. They show that people are not only constrained by borders; the crossing of borders also opens up new options of agency. Making active use of these, border-crossing actors construct their own live projects on the border in multiple ways against the original intention of the nation-state. Based on their intimate knowledge of the interaction of communities, anthropologists from Europe, the USA, Japan and Southeast Asia provide a vivid picture of the effects of state policies at the borders on these communities.
Author: Charles Patterson Giersch Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674021716 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
With comparative frontier history and pioneering use of indigenous sources, Giersch provides a groundbreaking challenge to the China-centered narrative of the Qing conquest. He focuses on the Tai domains of the Yunnan frontier on the politically fluid borderlands, where local, indigenous leaders were crucial actors in an arena of imperial rivalry.
Author: James Clad
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Author: Sean McDonald
Author: Yuk Wah Chan
Author: Enze Han
Author: Alexander Horstmann
Author: Noboru Ishikawa
Author: Alexander Horstmann
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Author: Charles Patterson Giersch