Call for Papers
5th Viennese Conference on South-East Asian Studies,
organized by the Society of South-East Asian Studies (SEAS)
Transnational, National and Local Approaches to Human Security in South-East Asia
May 28 & 29, 2010, Vienna, Austria
While traditional military conflicts have since the end of the Cold War further diminished, new non-traditional menaces, such as poverty, migration, people smuggling or environmental degradation, have increased.
Major events like the Asia Financial Crisis of 1997, the SARS epidemic in 2003 and the tsunami in 2004 have demonstrated that individuals are often more affected by these incidents than the state. The United Nations’ 1994 Human Development Report defines human security as both “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear”, referring to threats in seven areas: economic, food, health, environment, personal, community and political security. Yet, human security remains a vague inter-disciplinary concept, which is consequently still contested, both theoretically and politically.
The 5th Viennese Conference on South-East Asian Studies in late May 2010 invites submissions from various disciplines that deal with the question how the broad spectrum of human security challenges has been conceptually and politically addressed on the transnational, national or local level. Panel 1 examines how human security is defined in South-East Asia, Panel 2 looks at its concrete implementation.
Panel 1: The human security discourse in South-East Asia
In our first panel, we aim to analyze both the official security discourse of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and selected member states as well as the human security agenda of South-East Asian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society groups. How has the notion of people-oriented security evolved in the last decade? How does ASEAN and how do selected NGOs define human security?
Autocratic nations view the democratic elements of human security as a potentially disruptive element for their regime security. How can these elements, consequently, be reconciled with a traditional state-centric, regime legitimating understanding of security?
Panel 2: The implementation of human security on transnational, national or local level.
In this panel, we want to compare case studies for the implementation of human security on the different territorial levels, asking: What are the main obstacles for a successful implementation? Which concept of human security has been promoted? What are the key policy areas? Who are the main actors? How much influence do NGOs or the local population have? What role can foreign organizations or Official Development Assistance play in improving human security? Can the implementation of human security on a local level lead to a democratization of the whole political system from above etc.?
Panel 3: Open Panel
In our open Panel we offer researchers from all disciplines the opportunity to present analyses that are related to South-East Asia.
Keynote speaker
Prof. Donald Emmerson, Director, Southeast Asia Forum, Stanford University
Submissions
Paper proposals (max. two A4 pages) and a CV should be submitted via e-mail (publics@seas.at) by March 8, 2010. The submitters of abstracts will be notifi ed not later than March 31, 2010.
The presentation can be held in German or English, should not exceed 20 minutes and leave another 10 minutes for discussions in the plenum. Successful conference contributions can also be submitted to the Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies (ASEAS) for publication.
We particularly want to encourage PhD students to submit proposals for this conference.
For further information on SEAS and ASEAS:
www.seas.at
publics@seas.at
aseas@seas.at
--
Dr. Belinda Helmke
ASEAS Editorial Board
Society of Southeast Asian Studies
Stumpergasse 39/22
1060 Wien
Austria
Email: belinda.helmke@seas.at
Website: http://www.seas.at
