Between Legacy and Discourse: Southeast Asia as an Evolving Cultural Region

Richard A. O'Connor, Departments of Anthropolgy and Asian Studies, Sewanee The University of the South

While Southeast Asia's peoples, places and activities overlap intricately and refer to each other reflexively, modern thought nonetheless imagines discrete pieces that we can study one by one. One site can thus readily speak for a larger whole, both conveniently culturally constructed. Against these conventions, my talk treats local realities as adaptations to regional conditions. To illustrate I first consider the Balinese cockfight as a story we tell ourselves about meaning's sovereignty and then discuss 'Tai' as a regional tradition rather than a separate culture or particular people. My larger aim in thinking regionally is to see both beneath and beyond how 'nation' and 'culture' unduly dominate contemporary thought.

Richard A. O'Connor is Biehl Professor of International Studies and Anthropology and Co-director of Sewanee's Center for Teaching. His early work on Southeast Asia focused on Buddhist monasticism, indigenous law, and the region's urbanism. More recently his research has expanded to include the rise of early Southeast Asian states, the cultural ecology of rice agriculture, and the legacies that constitute Southeast Asia and South China as a cultural region. He has published widely on Southeast Asian anthropology including articles in the Journal of Asian Studies and Education about Asia.

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