This book is a collection of work by scholars currently pursuing research on human security and insecurities in Southeast Asia. It deals with a set of ‘insecurities’ that is not readily understood or measurable. As such, it conceptually locates the threats and impediments to ‘human security’ within relationships of risk, uncertainty, safety and trust. At the same time, it presents a wide variety of investigations and approaches from both localized and regional perspectives. By focusing on the human and relational dimensions of insecurities in Southeast Asia it highlights the ways in which vulnerable and precarious circumstances (human insecurities) are part of daily life for large numbers of people in Southeast Asia and are mainly beyond their immediate control. Many of the situations people experience in Southeast Asia represent the real outcomes of a range of largely unacknowledged socio-cultural-economic transformations interlinked by local, national, regional and global forces, factors and interests. Woven from experience and observations of life at various sites in Southeast Asia, the contributions in this volume give an internal and critical perspective to a complex and manifold issue. They draw attention to a variety of the less-than-obvious threats to human security and show how perplexing those threats can be. All of which underscores the significance of multidisciplinary approaches in rethinking and responding to the complex array of conditioning factors and interests underlying human insecurities in Southeast Asia.
Author Biography:
Paul J. Carnegie is Associate Professor of Political Science in the School of Government, Development and International Affairs at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji. He has active research interests in the fields of post-authoritarian politics, human security and localised responses to militant extremism with a particular focus on Indonesia alongside Southeast Asia and the MENA region more generally. Paul is the author of The Road from Authoritarianism to Democratization in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan). His research also appears in leading international journals including Pacific Affairs, the Middle East Quarterly, the Journal of Terrorism Research and the Australian Journal of International Affairs. He has taught previously in Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Egypt and the UAE.
Victor T. King is Emeritus Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Leeds University and Eminent Visiting Professor in the Institute of Asian Studies (IAS) and Sociology-Anthropology at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He has a wide range of research interests in the sociology and anthropology of Southeast Asia. His books include The Sociology of Southeast Asia: Transformation in a Developing Region (Copenhagen: NIAS Press and Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008; ebook 2011), with William Wilder The Modern Anthropology of South-East Asia: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2003; reprinted 2006), and translated into Indonesian as Antropologi Modern Asia Tenggara: Sebuah Pengantar (Yogyakarta: Kreasi Wacana, 2012), and his edited volume UNESCO in Southeast Asia: World Heritage Sites in Comparative Perspective (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2016).
Zawawi Ibrahim received his PhD in social anthropology from Monash University, Melbourne. His currently holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Institute of Asian Studies (IAS) and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He researches and writes on new Malaysian cinema and contemporary popular music, indigenous communities and their storytelling, peasantry and rural labour, the new media, and multiculturalism in Malaysia. He is the leader for IAS Popular Culture research track. His current research is on popular culture in Brunei, Islamic cinema in Indonesia and religious diversity governance in Malaysia. His books include The Malay Labourer: By the Window of Capitalism (1998); Cultural Contestations: Mediating Identities in a changing Malaysian Society (1998); Representation, Identity and Multiculturalism in Sarawak (2008), Blogging and Democratization in Malaysia (with Jun-E Tan) (2008); Social Science and Knowledge in a Globalizing World (2012); Penan Society and Imagined Development (with NoorShah M.S) (2012); and Borneo Studies in History, Society and Culture (Eds. with Victor King & Norsharina Hassan) (forthcoming). He has contributed articles to international journals, including Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Critical Asian Studies, Modern Asian Studies, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Asian Studies Review, Asian Journal of Social Sciences, Southeast Asian Studies (Kyoto), Seoumen Antropologi, Spectator, Situations and Positions (forthcoming).
