Managing Disruption and Developing Resilience for a Better Southeast Asia: The 4th Seasia Biennial Conference 2022

This open access book, stemming from the biennial Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies in Asia conference, confronts numerous contemporary issues in the Southeast Asia region, under the banner of the 2022 theme “Managing Disruption, Developing Resilience for a Better Southeast Asia.” Providing a platform for discussion and collaboration in the fields of sociology, education, population studies, cultural studies, public health, international relations, and other humanities and social science disciplines, the range of interdisciplinary chapters focus their critical analyses vis-à-vis the interpellation of economic, social, historical, artistic, cultural, religious, and political viewpoints. Organized into three sections, the first looks at new models of economic development, the challenges to education quality, the labor market in the digital era, and the demographic changes and critical issues facing both the young and elderly in the region. The second examines disasters as a future challenge for risk management, understandings of contemporary society and culture, the digital humanities, social development in the time of COVID-19, and identities in relation to religion, minorities, and social harmony. The final section addresses diaspora, migration, the region in the pandemic, citizenship and human security, democracy, and human rights, as well as foreign policy, diplomacy, and state sovereignty in Southeast Asia. As ASEAN comes of age, there has never been a more compelling need to provide region-based perspectives to complement the deepening economic, social, and cultural integration in the region.  For scholars working on Southeast Asia, “area” matters in geopolitical, economic, intellectual, institutional, social, cultural, and affective terms, and so this book transports the study of Southeast Asia from the periphery to the center, so as to enable scholars who live in and research the region to bring their research to a global readership. Relevant to scholars, public intellectuals, policy-makers, and activists working in all areas of the social sciences and humanities, this comprehensive book presents the very latest research on, and from, Southeast Asia.

Nawawi holds a Ph.D from the University of Leeds, UK. Currently, he is the head of the Research Center for Population, the National Research and Innovation Agency (Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional-BRIN), Indonesia. His research interests include labor movements, social protection, and impact of climate change to labor, women and children. He is the recipient of several research grants from the UK, Japan, and Korea on labor policy, employer, and union behavior in the public and private sectors. His latest publication on labor issues was published in Springer (2023) “Labour-Market Flexibility and Digitalization: Challenges to Work Intensification, Employment Relations, and Trade Unions in Indonesia” in Chi and Binh (eds) Governance in Transnational Societies in East and Southeast Asia. A central part of Nawawi’s work conducting high-quality policy research is accessible to policymakers, practitioners, the media, and the public.

Athiqah Nur Alami is a researcher at the Research Center for Politics, the National Research and Innovation Agency (Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional-BRIN), Indonesia. She completed her Ph.D. from the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. Her main interests are Indonesia's labor migration, foreign policy, and gender in International Relations. She has been part of the research team on Indonesia’s foreign policy for the last ten years. Her team has produced several publications, including a book on “Foreign Policy and Energy Security Issues in Indonesia” in Springer in 2017. In the last two years, Athiqah and her team have been conducting research on Indonesia in the Indo-Pacific, gender in Indonesia's foreign policy, and education for displaced children.

Julius Bautista is a Senior Lecturer at NUS College, National University of Singapore. He was previously an Associate Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University, Japan. He received a PhD in Southeast Asian Studies (anthropology and cultural history) at the Australian National University, and has published on topic of religion in Asia, with a focus on Roman Catholic material icons, devotional practices, and the relationship between religion and the state in the Philippines and Timor Leste.  He also specializes in the area of experiential and service learning in higher educational contexts.

Maitrii Aung-Thwin received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan (2001) where he studied Burmese and Southeast Asian history. He has lived and conducted research in Southeast Asia for nearly two decades.

Deasy Simandjuntak is both a political scientist and a political anthropologist. She completed her Ph.D. in 2010 at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. A recipient of the Taiwan Fellowship in 2020, Deasy is currently a visiting associate fellow at the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies (CAPAS), Academia Sinica, Taipei. Deasy publishes on Indonesian democracy/politics and Southeast Asian democracy and regularly give comments in the mass media. She is a co-editor of Aspirations with Limitations: Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (ISEAS Publishing, 2018). Her most recent publication is “Disciplining the Accepted, Amputating the Deviants: Segregated Religious Citizenship in Indonesia,” Asian Journal of Law and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Yanu Endar Prasetyo has a Ph.D. in rural sociology. His research focuses on poverty, food insecurity, and community sustainability. In his dissertation, he develops a rural vulnerability framework to analyze Walmart closures; socio-economic impact in rural Missouri. During his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri-Columbia, he published an article on a bibliometric analysis of environmental and resources sociology (2019) with his Adviser, Hua Qin, in the Journal of Society and Natural Resources, and recently an article on Exploring the dynamic relationships between risk perception and behavior in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 in the Journal of Social Science & Medicine (2021). This project was funded by the Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado-Boulder.