Workshop on Beyond Hills and Plains: Revisiting The 'Frontier' in the Southeast Asian Massif

Date: 11-13 Dec 2007
Location: Earth Lab, Block AS2/02-03, Department of Geography, NUS, Singapore

• Jointly organized by Dept of Southeast Asian Studies and Dept of Geography in the National University of Singapore.
• Supported by Dept of Resource Management in Asia Pacific, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies in the Australian National University.
• Co-organizers: Dr. Stan Boon Hwee Tan, Dr. Pow Choon Piew, Dr Harvey Neo and Dr. Vatthana Pholsena.

This workshop aims to bring together leading scholars and field researchers to examine critical issues relating to the study of ‘frontier’ regions in the Southeast Asian Massif (the upland region of mainland Southeast Asia encompassing portions of China (Yunnan), Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Burma). A major starting point of this workshop is the recognition that the term ‘frontier’ is multivalent and hence bearing different social/political meanings and spatial implications.

Studies of the ‘frontier’, however, often suggest that they are formed (both discursively and materially) through an ineluctable process of diffusion from powerful ‘Centers’ to less powerful ‘peripheries’. This paradigm, we suggest, is based on a binary framework that polarizes problematic categories such as majority/minority, lowland/upland, urban/rural; and centre/periphery, with the former indicating the source of a powerful exogenous vector of force diffusing into the Massif.

This workshop seeks to explore alternatives examining formations and transformations of frontiers in the Southeast Asian Massif and invites scholars from different academic disciplines to contribute to the debate. In this respect, the workshop will cover four main themes:

1. Demographic and cultural space.  We suggest strong distinctions between highlanders and lowlanders, urban and rural dwellers, centre and periphery are no longer tenable in an environment of cultural adaptation, political genesis, and a changing living landscape.
2. Ecological-economic space. We will be discussing the issue of dams and its ecological impacts, cross-border institutional collaborations (or non-collaboration) between local officials, individual behavior in a changing eco-environment. The workshop will also address the issue of the relationship between changing agricultural technologies, regulatory frameworks, commodity networks and ecological impacts.
3. Political space. Rather than perceiving the border regions solely through the lens of security and state integration, we suggest that these border regions are essentially centers within the matrix of the Southeast Asian Massif. The workshop also seeks to address the hypothesis that state formation on frontiers should not be perceived as a process of inevitable diffusion from a pre-existing center but as a process of localized genesis, that could effectively lead to a reshaping of the state form as it asserts its claims on the frontier.
4. Transborder space. The Southeast Asian Massif has long been considered a barrier to communication and a site of illicit practices. Now, it is seen as a site of economic integration and cross-border cooperation. We seek to explore how this is manifested in the form of regionalized commodity connectivities; how this new transborder space is mediated by the construction of grand infrastructural project, for example, the East-West Economic Corridor. 

Through the examination and discussions of these themes, the workshop hopes to contribute to the literature on ‘frontier’ regions both empirically by drawing on case studies and fieldwork experiences and conceptually through stimulating new theoretical reflections and insights.

Interested parties may write to Dr Stan Tan Boon Hwee at seatanbh@nus.edu.sg or Dr Pow Choon Piew at geopowcp@nus.edu.sg to participate as observers or discussants.

For more information on the workshop, please click on the link below:

Beyond Hills and Plains: Revisiting The 'Frontier' In The SEA Massif