Durable Violence in Southeast Asia: Machinery and Scale

Ario Seto; Gunnar Stange; Susanne Schröter

doi:10.14764/10.ASEAS-0018

Authors

Ario Seto Collaborative Research Center “Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes", Goethe University Frankfurt
Gunnar Stange Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna
Susanne Schröter Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0018

Keywords:

Southeast Asia, Violence

Abstract

Rampant forms of violence increasingly take place not only in troubled areas but also in centers and metropoles. Such violence is no longer simply confined to local concerns or historical ruptures, but emerges instead in relation to modalities of power. The movement of people and expanding networks of actors and capital enables the notion of violence to transgress boundaries set by institutions, geography, state, and power. In some conditions, rather than sealing off the emergence of violence, the transition to democracy has opened the door for engineered violent confrontations to manifest out of cleavages that have been tempered by previous authoritarian rule. ASEAS 12(2) addresses violence in selected cases and on different scales. The contributions discuss how violence is practiced, how it (re)produces structures, and how it may eventually transform into non-violence. Violence is not simply an outcome of tensions but is a mechanism that actors and organizations deploy to stabilize their struggles, which eventually makes peacebuilding or democratic projects volatile. The articles in this issue feature police violence in the Philippines; intimate partner violence against women in Vietnam; Islamist online/offline mobilization strategies in Indonesia; the role of traditional actors in reconciliation processes in Timor-Leste; and gender security in the context of conflict management in Thailand’s Deep South.

Author Biographies

Ario Seto, Collaborative Research Center “Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes", Goethe University Frankfurt

Ario Seto is a postdoctoral researcher and media anthropologist at the Collaborative Research Center “Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes,” Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. His recent book Netizenship: Activism and Online Community Transformation in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) details the disciplining practices and ethics in shaping militant netizens.

Gunnar Stange, Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna

Gunnar Stange is a post-doctoral researcher in the research group Population Geography and Demography at the Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Austria. His research interests include peace and conflict studies, development studies, and forced migration studies. His regional focus is on Southeast Asia.

Susanne Schröter, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt

Susanne Schröter is a professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, and founder as well as director of the Frankfurt Research Center on Global Islam. She is also a principal investigator at the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”. Her research interests include political Islam, Islamic extremism, the transformation of gender orders, and religious, political, and ethnic conflicts.

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