Flows and Movements in Southeast Asia: New Approaches to Transnationalism

Drawing on empirical research, this study proposes a new examination of Southeast Asia. The book does not presume the region to be a static regional construct composed of rigidly defined and bounded national, sociocultural, and ecological units. Rather, it locates and reconfigures the nation-states in a fluid, open system of multidirectional traffic, both within and across boundaries. In recent years, transnationalism has gained considerable academic and popular currency, but it remains a contested and often unanalyzed concept. The book substantiates the transnationalism of Southeast Asia with empirical case studies to better understand its forms, functions, and meanings. Its strength lies in the range and multitude of objects studied, covering a diversity of flows: not only of people, goods, and capital, but also of flora and fauna, ideas, practices, diseases, art forms, governmentality, technologies, and symbols. With the participation of specialized multidisciplinary researchers, the book examines the physics of flows and metaphysics of social movements entailed by such flows. (Series: Frontiers of Area Studies)