Stanford University

Hard Choices

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Hard Choices offers a most rewarding perspective on how Southeast Asian states straddle the ongoing tensions among three rarely compatible goals—security, democracy, and regionalism. Empirically rich and topically diverse, [the book] is broad in scope and full of deep analytic insights. It will be appreciated well beyond Southeast Asia." — T. J. PEMPEL, University of California, Berkeley

Southeast Asia faces hard choices. The region’s most powerful organization, ASEAN, is being challenged to ensure security and encourage democracy while simultaneously reinventing itself as a model of Asian regionalism.

Should ASEAN’s leaders defend a member country’s citizens against state predation for the sake of justice—and risk splitting ASEAN itself? Or should regional leaders privilege state security over human security for the sake of order—and risk being known as a dictators’ club? Should ASEAN isolate or tolerate the junta in Myanmar? Is democracy a requisite to security, or is it the other way around? How can democratization become a regional project without first transforming the Association into a “people centered” organization? But how can ASEAN reinvent itself along such lines if its member states are not already democratic?

How will its new Charter affect ASEAN’s ability to make these hard choices? How is regionalism being challenged by transnational crime, infectious disease, and other border-jumping threats to human security in Southeast Asia? Why have regional leaders failed to stop the perennial regional “haze” from brush fires in democratic Indonesia? Does democracy help or hinder nuclear energy security in the region?

In this timely book—the second of a three-book series focused on Asian regionalism—ten analysts from six countries address these and other pressing questions that Southeast Asia faces in the twenty-first century.

Recent Praise for Hard Choices

“In this delightful volume, a diverse, fresh, and talented group of authors shed new light on Southeast Asia and speak engagingly to wider scholarly questions.  Emmerson's introduction sets the tone for an unusually creative edited collection.”
 —Andrew MacIntyre, Australian National University
“In Hard Choices, Donald Emmerson has brought together a remarkable group of leading young scholars to write on Southeast Asian regionalism from political-security, economic, and sociological perspectives. His introductory chapter defines the dimensions of regionalism on which the other contributors elaborate in a series of fine essays examining ASEAN’s past, present, and alternative futures. Hard Choices is a landmark study that will be consulted for years to come by scholars and practitioners. Highly recommended.”
—Sheldon Simon, Arizona State University

Examination copies: Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

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Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia

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Donald K. Emmerson
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Shorenstein APARC
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Lisa Lee

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Lisa Lee_0.jpg

Lisa Lee received an MA in human resources management from Hawai'i Pacific University in Honolulu and a BA in civil law (Sarjana Hukum) from Tarumanagara University in Jakarta. Prior to joining the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, she held managerial and administrative positions at ISS International School in Singapore; Bank of Japan and Panasonic Finance America in New York City; and at Media Indonesia in Jakarta. She worked at APARC through March 2025.

Program Coordinator, Asia Health Policy Program, Southeast Asia Program, and Taiwan Program
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Science and Secularity: Rethinking Religous Reform

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This series of talks explore a number of issues which have arisen from a study of ethnogenesis, identity formation, state building, religious reform, and socio-economic "modernization" in selected regions of insular and peninsular Southeast Asia in the (late) modern period (late 19th century to the present).Clearly, none of these broad thematic areas can be adequately studied on its own.

The final talk examines the relationship between religion and secularisation, and specifically the implications of the so-called religious revival that is said to have taken place in different parts of Southeast Asia in recent years.  The main aim here is not, however, to engage in the normative debate over what constitutes a ‘proper’ relationship between religion and the modern (secular) state in modern societies – that is to contribute directly to current debates about the modern ‘public sphere’. Rather by focussing on the formation of alternative publics, he proposes to investigate relations between religion and secularity from a broadly phenomenological or experiential – rather than from a naturalist or socio-historical – perspective.

Among Joel S. Kahn’s many books are Other Malays (2006), Modernity and Exclusion (2001), Southeast Asian Identities (ed., 1998), Culture, Multiculture, Postculture (1995), and Constituting the Minangkabau (1993). His other writings include State, Region, and the Politics of Recognition (forthcoming in National Integration and Regionalism in Indonesia and Malaysia). He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and has held appointments at Monash University and University College London, among other institutions. He serves or has served as an editorial board member of Critique of Anthropology, Current Anthropology, and Ethnicities. His doctorate is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

A technical problem prevented the recording of Professor Kahn's third lecture.

Philippines Conference Room

Joel Kahn 2008 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Lecturer and Professor of Anthropology Emeritus Speaker La Trobe University, Australia
Lectures

Dynamics of Identity: Empires, States & Groups

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This series of talks explore a number of issues which have arisen from a study of ethnogenesis, identity formation, state building, religious reform, and socio-economic "modernization" in selected regions of insular and peninsular Southeast Asia in the (late) modern period (late 19th century to the present).Clearly, none of these broad thematic areas can be adequately studied on its own.

The second is this series addresses the formation of group identities in Southeast Asia and their implication in modern processes of state formation, with a particular focus on the category ‘Malay’. In looking at the making of modern Malay-ness he will also address three areas of recent debate: firstly, over the nature and distinctiveness of so-called cultural identities in the modern period; secondly, over the (continuing) role of empire in the shaping of modern identities; and, thirdly, over the impact of cultural and religious pluralism on Southeast Asian polities.

Among Joel S. Kahn’s many books are Other Malays (2006), Modernity and Exclusion (2001), Southeast Asian Identities (ed., 1998), Culture, Multiculture, Postculture (1995), and Constituting the Minangkabau (1993). His other writings include State, Region, and the Politics of Recognition (forthcoming in National Integration and Regionalism in Indonesia and Malaysia). He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and has held appointments at Monash University and University College London, among other institutions. He serves or has served as an editorial board member of Critique of Anthropology, Current Anthropology, and Ethnicities. His doctorate is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Philippines Conference Room

Joel Kahn 2008 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Lecturer and Professor of Anthropology Emeritus Speaker La Trobe University, Australia
Lectures

Comparing Modernities: Is Southeast Asia Unique?

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This series of talks will explore a number of issues which have arisen from a study of ethnogenesis, identity formation, state building, religious reform, and socio-economic "modernization" in selected regions of insular and peninsular Southeast Asia in the (late) modern period (late 19th century to the present).  Clearly, none of these broad thematic areas can be adequately studied on its own.

This talk is the first in a series of 3 lectures and explores the theme of modernity, specifically by asking whether we can or should speak of a distinctively Southeast Asian form, pattern, structure or trajectory of modernity - a question which arises out of the ‘revisionist' literature on so-called alternative modernities.

Among Joel S. Kahn's many books are Other Malays (2006), Modernity and Exclusion (2001), Southeast Asian Identities (ed., 1998), Culture, Multiculture, Postculture (1995), and Constituting the Minangkabau (1993). His other writings include "State, Region, and the Politics of Recognition" (forthcoming in National Integration and Regionalism in Indonesia and Malaysia). He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and has held appointments at Monash University and University College London, among other institutions. He serves or has served as an editorial board member of Critique of Anthropology, Current Anthropology, and Ethnicities. His doctorate is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Philippines Conference Room

Joel Kahn 2008 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Lecturer and Professor of Anthropology Emeritus Speaker La Trobe University
Lectures

Late Democratization in Pacific Asia

Professor Thompson builds on Barrington Moore's insight that there are different "paths to the modern" world. Thompson's manuscript explores alternatives to the familiar South Korean-and Taiwan-based model of "late democratization." According to that model, political pluralism follows a formative period of economic growth during which labor is demobilized and big business, religious leaders, and professionals depend upon and are co-opted by the state.

Worker Identities and the Origins of Capital in Vietnam

The Vietnamese government legalized strikes in 1995. Since then Vietnamese workers have gone on strike more than 1,500 times. Most of these actions have erupted in factories established by capital investments from South Korea and Taiwan. Far fewer have been reported in factories relying on private investments from other countries or in publicly funded and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). When labor protests do occur in SOEs, they tend to be less confrontational, involving petitions and letters of complaint sent to local labor newspapers and relevant officials.

Southeast Asian Studies at Stanford: A rising profile

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Five visiting scholars with expertise on Southeast Asia will spend varying portions of the academic year 2008-09 in residence at Stanford. Shorenstein APARC and the Southeast Asia Forum will host four of them: three were selected under the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Initiative on Southeast Asia. and one is a recipient of a 2008-09 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship. A fifth scholar will be on campus as a National Fellow of the Hoover Institution.

The five are John Ciorciari, Joel S. Kahn, Mark Thompson, Angie Ngoc Tran, and Christian von Luebke.

John Ciorciari spent the 2007-08 academic year at Stanford as a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Shorenstein APARC. He finished a book that examines how Southeast Asian states have "hedged" their relations with the United States and China.

Dr. Ciorciari will spend upcoming academic year at Stanford as a Hoover Institution National Fellow. In that capacity he plans to expand his research to include the international relations of India.

Joel S. Kahn is a professor of anthropology (emeritus) in the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia. He will be at Stanford for the first half of October 2008 as the 2008 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Lecturer.

While at Stanford Professor Kahn will give three public lectures. Their tentative titles are: "A Southeast Asian Modernity?"; "Empires, States, and Political Identities in (Pen)insular Southeast Asia"; and "Religion, Reform, Science, and Secularity." Details including dates, times, and venues will be posted as they become known.

Mark Thompson is a professor of political science at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He will be in residence at Stanford in Winter and Spring 2009 as the 2009 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow.

While at Stanford, Prof. Thompson will pursue a book project on "Late Democratization in Pacific Asia." The book will question the claim that democratization in Pacific Asia (including Southeast Asia) has been driven by economic growth and offer an alternative perspective. He will present the results of his project in a public lecture in the spring of 2009. Date, time, venue, and other details will be posted when known.

Angie Ngoc Trần is a professor in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB). She will be in residence at Stanford for the second half of November 2008 as the 2008 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow.

In a public lecture on November 17, 2008 (Mobilized Workers vs. Morphing Capital: Challenging Global Supply Chains in Vietnam), Professor Tran will present the results of her study of labor-capital relations in Vietnam and how the different national origins of investors and owners affect workers' conditions, consciousness, and activism. Details including time and venue will be posted as they become known.

Christian von Luebke was a research fellow in Tokyo at Waseda University's Institute for Global Political Economy in 2007-08 following receipt of his 2007 PhD in public policy and governance at the Australian National University. He will be at Stanford for the 2008-09 academic year as a Walter H. Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow.

During his residence Dr. von Luebke will pursue a research and writing project on "Good Governance in Transition: Explaining Local Policy Variations in Indonesia, China, and the Philippines." He will give a public lecture on the results of his project in winter or spring 2009. The date, time, venue, and other details will be posted when known.

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