10th International Anthropology Conference

Envisioning the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community: Culture Conflict and Hope

23-25 November 2011 at Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Center, Bangkok

At its Ninth Summit in October 2003 the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced its intention to create an ASEAN Community based upon three pillars: ASEAN Security Community, ASEAN Economic Community and an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. During the 12th ASEAN Summit in 2007, member countries leaders signed the Cebu Declaration on the Acceleration of an ASEAN Community, thus affirming their strong commitment to accelerate the establishment of the ASEAN Community by 2015. Ten months later, at the 13th ASEAN Summit in Singapore, ASEAN leaders agreed to develop a blueprint to ensure that concrete actions would be undertaken to promote the establishment of an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). Officially launched in 2009 as part of the Roadmap for an ASEAN Community, the Blueprint for the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community presents a plan for building a regional identity grounded in the expansion of educational and employment opportunities, the provision of social welfare and food security, the recognition of rights, environmental protection and social justice, and the promotion of the region's distinctive history and cultural heritage.

This vision of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community as a region unified by common social and cultural values represents an important turning point for the organization, inasmuch as it transcends the role that ASEAN has played historicallyfirst as a bulwark against communism beginning in the 1960s, and later as a proponent of regional economic trade , infrastructural development, and security in the post Cold War era. Indeed, ASEAN's Blueprint for a SocioCultural Community reflects the global influence of new social movements calling for environmental sustainability, educational equality and gender equity, as well as civil and political rights of marginalized groups, such as ethnic minorities and laborers. The blueprint also reflects efforts to mitigate the conflicts associated with nationalism by creating new, supra-national regional identities unified by shared civic values rather than national pride. However, this hopeful vision for the ASEAN region's future is fundamentally challenged by a complex reality. Historically-rooted tensions continue to shape relations between nations in the region, while ethnic minorities, labor migrants and other disenfranchised groups continue to face a host of barriers to equal opportunities. Hosted by the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, the 10th International Anthropology Conference seeks to address both the hopes and the challenges of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. Drawing upon the rich respository of anthropological research on the Southeast Asian region, the SAC conference aims to expose the roots of the region's enduring political tensions, cultural contestations and social inequalities. At the same time, the conference aims to engage in creative dialog about how to realize the hopeful visions of the region's future. The region's diverse ethnic groups and marginal peoples have confronted similar challenges in relation to the state and economic development, and the SAC is particularly interested in cultural movements which reflect the many dimensions of conflict, creativity, and hope as experienced by ordinary people throughout the ASEAN region. These shared experiences have formed the basis of a grassroots regional identity and a platform for political mobilization through cross-border media, regional rights' organizations, and cooperative social networks. With the objective of offering critical, anthropological perspectives of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, this year's Anthropology Conference will focus on the following issues:

Anthropology - Southeast Asia This section will review anthropological understandings of the ASEAN region based on academic research and knowledge of Southeast Asia. Panels will investigate the construction of Southeast Asia as a region and unit of academic study, and discuss how knowledge generated from Southeast Asian Studies might help us better understand the historicallyrooted sensitivities between nation-states. Panels will also discuss how modern media and contemporary culture are creating regional communities which transcend the control of the state.

The ASEAN way of living This section will focus on the problem of the imbalance of the ASEAN Roadmap's three main pillarssecurity, economic growth and the socio-cultural community. In particular, the section will demonstrate that the third pillar of the socio-cultural community is in fact understood first and foremost as contributing to economic growth through the promotion of cultural industries. This section will analyze the overall picture and the direction of development, looking at trade and investment, the relocation of commercial crop production to Thailands neighboring countries, the cross-border migration of workers, , and the tourism industry. Taking the perspective of ordinary people in the region, this panel will examine how these economic forces are impacting the daily lives and cultural identities of local communities, and what this might mean for the ASEAN socio-cultural community of the future.

Rights and Conflict This section will showcase the shared experiences of marginal and disenfranchised groups within the ASEAN region, as well as the efforts of these groups to establish social movements to assert their rights. This section will discuss issues of conflict and violence due to the expression of different identities; new social movements demanding the right to mother-tongue and ethnic languages in education; the government control of sexual identity expression control, as well as the concept of rights within the Thai context. It is our hope that these shared experiences will offer a creative starting point for cultivating a shared sense of regional identity.

"outsiders" of ASEAN The concept of this section is to "challenge and invite"ASEAN to place emphasis on the ASEAN socio- cultural community through the stories of the forgotten people. This topic is regarded as a special topic and will be presented through ethnographic films which document human rights issues in Burma, the lives of people in eastern Indonesia etc. These films bring to light the experiences of marginal and neglected populations in the regiongroups that should be the focus of building an ASEAN Socio-cultural community based on equality, human rights and cultural diversity.

Hopes of the Common People This section will present the hopes of the common people for a socio-cultural community, in order to show that it is possible to work towards a regional identity based on mutual respect and understanding without ASEAN leading the way. The section will include the following topics: looking forward by considering Southeast Asia from a historical perspective; lessons from ethnic minority rights movements in the European Community; religion as a tool for fostering the respect for difference; the role of civil society in the international arena; cultural networks, and border areas as spaces of earning.

All of these are the anthropological inquiries that the SAC would like to raise in order to understand the role of ASEAN in relation to peoples livelihoods and cultural identities at the regional level. Furthermore, it is hoped that this conference will identify important areas for further study and research, with the aim of forging a path towards peaceful co-existence in the future.