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- Written by Hansley A. JULIANO
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EXCERPT
"...[T]he literature has tended to either downplay or ignore the role of non-elite political actors (both in terms of action, inaction, or inability to participate) in relation to crises facing many countries. The role of civil society has been usually valorized when scholars turn their attention to what maintains a country’s quality of democracy ... The challenge of addressing these shortcomings is increasingly evident in the works of civil society research worldwide. The most recent is Ibrahim Natil, Vanessa Malila, and Youcef Sai’s, Barriers to Effective Civil Society Organizations (2020), that stands as a recent attempt to not only theoretically synthesize these debates on how civil society organizations (CSOs) may survive unwelcome political contexts, but also the extent to which an organization can “crisis-proof” itself. Their study’s conceptual framework relies on the notion of 'a participatory civil society, researching civic engagement and development despite the challenges of shifts in foreign aid, political and social context.'"
BIONOTE
Hansley A. JULIANO is a Doctoral Candidate of the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan.
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Type of Manuscript: Book Review
Volume, Issue, Year: Volume 59, Issue 1, Year 2023
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Back to Asian Studies 59 (1): 2023
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- Written by Marian F. GONGORA
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EXCERPT
The popularity of do-it-yourself and solo travel augmented by discounted airfares offered by budget airlines is evident on social media— something that my friend and I often take advantage. With similar interests in Asian society and culture, as well as travel and photography, we decided to go on our first adventure together. Korea may have been our country of specialization in graduate school, but that did not diminish our interest in Southeast Asia. Fortunately, the visa free agreement among the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) made it easier for Southeast Asians like us to travel within the region for up to 14 days (ASEAN n.d.). However, many Filipino tourists are still not familiar with Lao PDR—aside from some Philippine television crew shooting on location for a documentary while we were there. Probably, the lack of direct flights from Manila to Laos accounts for this.
BIONOTE
Marian F. GONGORA is a faculty member of the Department of International Studies at Far Eastern University, Manila where she teaches courses on Geography and Global Challenges and Comparative Foreign Policy of Major Powers. She obtained her master’s degree in Asian Studies (major in Northeast Asia – Korea) at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman, and her Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila. She was also an exchange student at Seoul National University. She previously worked for the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the Philippines and has undertaken research projects at the UP Asian Center and UP Korea Research Center. Her research interests include international relations, area studies, geopolitics and human security, popular culture and public diplomacy, and women’s issues.
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Type of Manuscript: Travel Narrative
Volume, Issue, Year: Volume 59, Issue 1, Year 2023
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Back to Asian Studies 59 (1): 2023
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- Written by Joseph Tse-Hei LEE
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INTRODUCTION
Hong Kong’s “One Country, Two Systems” framework, once lauded for fostering a financial hub and set to expire in 2047, is now widely considered defunct. The imposition of the National Security Law on 30 June 2020 marked an end to the territory’s legal autonomy and signaled Beijing’s direct assertion of political control amid intensifying Sino-American rivalries (Lee 2020b). As Michael C. Davis (2020) observes, “[t]he intrusion of the new national security law is not so much a new behavior as it is a progression of a long pattern of intervention and distrust that dates back to before the handover.” The draconian measures have fundamentally turned the territory’s “promised liberal constitution” into a repressive “national security constitution” (Davis 2020, 8). The Basic Law’s original commitment to a liberal, open society has been dismantled. Perspectives on these measures vary: some see them as necessary responses to perceived existential threats, while others view them as authoritarian tactics to restructure a once-vibrant civil society (Lee 2020c).
BIONOTE
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee is a Professor of History at Pace University in New York City, USA. His research focuses on faith and politics in modern China. His most recent publications include From Missionary Education to Confucius Institutes (with Jeff Kyong-McClain, published by Routledge in 2024), RESIST! Democracy and Youth Activism in Myanmar, Hong Kong, and Singapore (with Amy Freedman, published by Pace University Press in 2024), Empire Competition: Southeast Asia as a Site of Imperial Contestation (with Amy Freedman, published by Pace University Press in 2021), and The Church as Safe Haven: Christian Governance in Modern China (with Lars Peter Laamann, by Brill in 2019).
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Type of Manuscript: Essay
Volume, Issue, Year: Volume 59, Issue 1, Year 2023
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Back to Asian Studies 59 (1): 2023
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- Written by Paul J. CARNEGIE
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INTRODUCTION
For disadvantaged individuals and communities, Southeast Asia’s pursuit of economic growth and development is shadowed by a deepening everyday precarity. This paper examines how state-led discourse and practice tend to obscure the diverse and situated realities of precarity across the region. The marginalized and dispossessed are routinely aggregated within narrow framings of risk and vulnerability, with the underlying conditions of their precarity largely masked. While ostensibly neutral and technocratic, these assessments remain insufficient for grasping the forces and interests configuring and reproducing the very circumstances they purport to address. This paper advances a precarity lens as a timely and generative means for interrogating the constitutive relationships between political authority, commercial expansion, ecological degradation, and structural inequality permeating Southeast Asia’s contemporary condition.
BIONOTE
Paul J. Carnegie is an Associate Professor of Politics at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. His interests focus on the sociology of the everyday, the politics of development, state formation, marginality, and precarity in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. He is the author of The Road from Authoritarianism to Democratization in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and co-editor of Human Insecurities in Southeast Asia and (Re)presenting Brunei Darussalam: A Sociology of the Everyday (both Springer, 2016; 2023). His research output has appeared in Pacific Affairs, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, South East Asia Research, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Journal of Population Research, and the Australian Journal of International Affairs.
ARTICLE INFORMATION
Type of Manuscript: Essay
Volume, Issue, Year: Volume 59, Issue 1, Year 2023
Pages:
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