Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia

Abstract

‘Area studies' use a geographical metaphor to visualise and naturalise particular social spaces as well as a particular scale of analysis. They produce specific geographies of knowing but also create geographies of ignorance. Taking Southeast Asia as an example, in this paper I explore how areas are imagined and how area knowledge is structured to construct area ‘heartlands' as well as area ‘borderlands‘. This is illustrated by considering a large region of Asia (here named Zomia) that did not make it as a world area in the area dispensation after World War 2 because it lacked strong centres of state formation, was politically ambiguous, and did not command sufficient scholarly clout. As Zomia was quartered and rendered peripheral by the emergence of strong communities of area specialists of East, Southeast, South, and Central Asia, the production of knowledge about it slowed down. I suggest that we need to examine more closely the academic politics of scale that create and sustain area studies, at a time when the spatialisation of social theory enters a new, uncharted terrain. The heuristic impulse behind imagining areas, and the high-quality, contextualised knowledge that area studies produce, may be harnessed to imagine other spatial configurations, such as ‘crosscutting’ areas, the worldwide honeycomb of borderlands, or the process geographies of transnational flows. Scholars of all conventional areas can be involved in this project to ‘jump scale’ and to develop new concepts of regional space.

Muslim Cosmopolitans? Transnational Life in Northern Pakistan

“…As is often noted in the case of other borderlands, it would be tempting to think of Chitrali Muslims as, above all else, living at the margins of the Pakistan nation-state and on the periphery of South Asia. In contrast, this article "jumps scale" (Van Schendel 2002a) by considering the wider regional and analytical significance of relationships between Chitrali Muslims and their neighbors in Tajikistan and Afghanistan.…”

“…3 In Chitral, too, connective ties of kin, trade, and religious knowledge are all central to the making of transregional forms of Muslim collective identity that challenge conventional core-periphery models of the sacred geography of Asian Islam. 4 This article adds to these studies by exploring the ways in which 3 For comparative studies of other transregional spaces that cut across more conventional representations of cultural "areas," see Bruce Grant (2005), Engseng Ho (2002Ho ( , 2004Ho ( , 2006, Seteney Shami (2000), Edward Simpson (2006), andWillem van Schendel (2002a). See Benjamin F. Soares (2005) and Robert Launay (1992) for considerations of transregional Muslim identities in West Africa.…”

ASEAN and interconnecting regional spheres: lessons for the Indian Ocean Region

“…When it comes to considerations of regional inter-governmental and inter-state security cooperation, traditional military and strategic concerns combine strongly with issues of economic and energy security (Berlin 2010;Rumley and Chaturvedi 2004;2005). At the same time, cooperation over say matters of energy security may generate potential 'threats' and 'security dilemmas' (Rumley 2008).…”

People, Land and Poppy: the Political Ecology of Opium and the Historical Impact of Alternative Development in Northwest Thailand

“…Their swiddening keeps them mobile, and their societies do not allow for the emergence of centralized rule: egalitarianism predominates amongst highlanders, and Myanmar's Kachin would go so far as to kill emergent leaders who seemed too ambitious (Leach, 1954). Scott (2009), Van Schendel (2002 and others postulate that much of the Zomia population, including Karen, migrated to the hills in order to escape from the centralizing rule of lowland and wet-rice cultivating states that sought to capture and transport populations near to wetland rice producing areas, putting them to work cultivating monocrops which could then be taken, taxed, and stored for long periods. In additional to monocropping, these lowland states were characterized by permanent settlements; uniformity of culture, language, and education; the propagation of dynastic myths to justify rule in cosmological terms; the record-keeping made possible by literacy; the levying of tax; and conscription in pursuit of all of the above.…”

“…The near-total reduction in opium cultivation, however, was aided by much more than new crops and price guarantees. The era of eradication was heralded by the increased presence of Van Schendel (2002) coined the word "Zomia" to describe the upland southeast Asian land massif which stretches from Vietnam to Tibet, and which includes Northwestern Thailand: an area traditionally resistant to centralized rule due to its high elevation, extensive forest cover, rugged topography, and the friction which results. Unlike monocropping lowland Thais, Bamars and others who often cultivate Padi rice, highlanders, including Thailand's Karen, Akha, Hmong, Lahu, and Lisu, cultivate a wide variety of crops that are hard to seize and tax, such as tubers.…”