Regional Identities in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, as a regional configuration of nation-states called ASEAN, is a community of multiple identities. Over time, its citizens’ loyalties were formed around national and transnational frameworks involving ethnic, religious, and ideological affinities. In the post-independence period, they were impacted by the processes of decolonization, nation-building, the Cold War, globalization, and the rise of China. As a result, Southeast Asia is emerging as a confluence of competing and overlapping identities. 

 

Thus, in recent years, ASEAN has noticed the appearance of new collective imaginations about the region’s future, committing its member states to directions beyond the politico-economic realm. Yet there is a risk that more exclusive visions among its people, whether national, religious, ethnic, or other allegiances, will hold sway.

 

This book unpacks these competing identities. Rich in ethnographic and historical material, its chapters examine identities shaped by generational markers, transnational linkages, and shared experiences of violence. Collectively, they point to the region’s historical fractures and contemporary challenges.