Bridging the Disciplinary Divide: 50 years of Research at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Abstract

This paper traces the birth of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) approach to Area Studies, explores how the institution evolved to consolidate and institutionalize its activities, and introduces its methodological responses and research initiatives that have evolved over the past 50 years. Since before the founding of CSEAS in 1963, Kyoto University researchers had been involved in multidisciplinary, field-based investigations of Southeast Asian society and nature. The origins of CSEAS’s philosophy and commitment to the region lie in the individual researchers at Kyoto University, their empirically-based studies, and shared interests in ever more integrated and multifaceted understandings of local society. The paper traces and offers an overview of the large-scale projects that framed and guided research to present fundamental approaches towards issues in the region. This is through a commitment to long-term field-based studies in and of local societies; empirical studies grounded in local languages; and multidisciplinary, team-based research that has bridged the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. This paper also shows how these approaches arose in response to changes and processes transforming social and environmental systems of Southeast Asians societies. This has informed the development of conceptual and theoretical work that has developed as a response to empirically grounded understandings emerging from those societies.