ALTERSEA Conference 2022: Panel 1B & Panel 2

SEA Junction will host the gathering of participants and live broadcast the Panel 1B and Panel 2 of the conference “ENGAGING RESEARCH – Exploring Collaborations between Researchers, Activists and Citizens” on 3 November 2022 at 12.00-14.00 and 14.30-16.00 respectively. More information about the conference and panel can be found below.

Conference description

As authoritarianism grows across Southeast Asia (Case 2019) and some forms of “violent neoliberalism” (Springer 2015) penetrate the governance of environments, cities, workplaces and labour markets, dissident voices sometimes emerge from unexpected places. To study these voices and examine the movements that are taking shape involves tackling the question of the researcher’s engagement in a particularly pressing way. While this question has become a vital one in social sciences over the past decades (e‧g. Kirsch 2018, Low & Engle Merry 2010, Ortner 2019, Salemink 2016, Speed 2006), it is even more inescapable when it comes to studying alterpolitics (Ciavolella & Boni 2015), that is, movements that struggle to bring about alternatives to established powers such as States, transnational agencies or financial market players. Similarly, activists and all who fight for their rights might consider what it means for them to connect to researchers, as well as to engage in intercultural and ideo-praxical translations.

This online conference will reflect upon different forms that research on and with social movements can take. We’ll think together through questions and dilemmas that are likely to arise along the way. How might lines between researchers and activists become blurred or, on the contrary, be sharply recast? How do these different actors influence each other and their ways of conceiving their undertakings? What are conflicting expectations that might emerge and how can they be handled? Rather than referring to fixed, generic ethical guidelines, we think that the most fruitful way to learn how to navigate such delicate collaborations is by considering people’s experiences and their shared reflexivities. For many people across Southeast Asia it is becoming increasingly dangerous to express disagreement, so such an exchange only appears more urgent.

By proposing different formats for presentation and discussion —panels, roundtables, Focus Group Discussions and posters— we wish to favour the participation of people from both academic and activist backgrounds and to provide space for a variety of approaches. While we consider, along with many others (e‧g. Low and Engle Merry 2010) that researchers always already write from a particular, unneutral position, we rely upon the tools of reflexivity and contextualization to approach the study of social movements in a scientific, but also committed, manner.

PANEL 1-B – TRAJECTORIES through a gender lens

Navigating across a plurality of sectors of research on social mobilizations

Chairperson: Saskia E. Wieringa, University of Amsterdam

This panel aims to highlight the itineraries of different figures of engaged research: grassroots intellectuals, movement theoreticians, university-based committed researchers, citizen-scholars and more militant productors of knowledge. How do the militant careers of thinkers-actors evolve between different kinds of categories, in a continuum or through trials, personal reassessment and disengagement? The presenters will also report on people who have chosen to maintain forms of distancing toward engagement in order to preserve what they conceive as their freedom for research, to be able to continue producing fresh outsider’s insights and to adopt more independent postures enabling people to speak to them with the least possible a priori. The portraits of intellectual-activists can be based on ethnographic observation, archival materials, interviews, and personal testimonies.

• Erize Ladia, Charles (University of the Philippines Diliman, Department of Political Science) – Queering local governments: LGBTQ+ movement organizations as strategic brokers for sexual citizenship in Philippine local governments
• Kusuma, Bayu Mitra A. (PhD student, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan) – L’ultimo Ultras: When Italian Movie Inspires the Progressive Women’s Football Fans Movement in Indonesia
• Kurniati, Erni (Graduate student at State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta Indonesia; Junior researcher at Division for Applied Social Psychology Research; Junior researcher at Lab. Bantenologi State Islamic University Sultan Maulana Hasanudin Banten Indonesia) – Why does dating damage? Discourse analysis through the Instagram account of Indonesia Tanpa Pacaran

PANEL 2 – METHOD

Articulating different goals and approaches

Chairperson: Serina Abdul Rahman, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

“Participant observation” has been widely discussed as being an oxymoron, and the contradiction in terms is only exacerbated when it comes to studying political movements, especially those one might feel aligned with. (How) is it possible to articulate participation, involvement and critical analysis? Which shape to give to collaborations implicating activists and researchers within the framework of a collective action? What kind of tensions are prone to emerge between activists, academic researchers and professional researchers around the research process, the purpose and methods of knowledge production and dissemination (Edelman 2009: 247)? We welcome concrete examples of doing fieldwork within alterpolitical movements and navigating conditions, expectations and time frames. The presenters will discuss experiences of shared objectives, equitable synergies and reciprocal enrichment in cross–sectoral research. They will also address the potential negotiations led by the researchers in order to maintain a critical distance toward movements’ official narratives, to address uncomfortable questions and to resolve questions of research findings’ ownership.

Reference: Edelman, Marc, “Synergies and tensions between rural social movements and professional Researchers”, Journal of Peasant Studies, 36 (1), 2009: 245–265.

• Sudarat Musikawong, Tammy Ko Robinson, Teeranong Sakulsri, Sopit Cheevapanich, Sirijit Sunanta, Suchada Thaweesit, Adisorn Kerdmongkol, Charamporn Holumyong, Semi Kwon & Pichaiwat Saengprapan (Mahidol University, Institute for Population and Social Research) – Transversals and Migrant Workers Rights: MMC Social Lab Inter-sectoral Dialogues and Alter-Politics
• Cruz-Claudio, Valerie May M. (Ateneo de Manila University, History Department) – Constitutional Rights, Crimes and Cruelty: The Filipino Woman in Selected Laws and Jurisprudence from the Third Republic to the Present
• Thanh Thanh, Phan (Institute of Human Studies, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) – Farmer Resistance through the lens of social movement: A Case of Agricultural Land Conversion in Peri-Urban Hanoi

Organizers:

SEA Junction, established under the Thai non-profit organization Foundation for Southeast Asia Studies (ForSEA), aims to foster understanding and appreciation of Southeast Asia in all its socio-cultural dimensions, from arts and lifestyles to economy and development. Conveniently located at Room 408 of the Bangkok Arts and Culture Center or BACC (across MBK, BTS National Stadium), SEA Junction facilitates public access to knowledge resources and exchanges among students, practitioners and Southeast Asia lovers. For more information, see www.seajunction.org, join the Facebook group:  http://www.facebook.com/groups/1693058870976440/ and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @seajunction

ALTERSEA is hosted by Centre Asie du Sud-Est, Paris. We study social movements and social activism, as well as systems of social regulation that are less visible but sustain local capacities of political action. Our observatory develops a variety of axis of study in six clusters: environmentalism, religiosities, cultural heritage, political participation, non-merchant transactions, subjectivities & subjugation. For more information, please see https://altersea.hypotheses.org/home.

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