Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

xviiIt is reasonable and necessary, of course, to imposeadministrative and budgetary limits on the scope of theprogram. But it may be useful to reflect on our conceptand understanding of Asia. Does the geographical tagimply that our public intellectuals should preferablyfocus on Asian issues or address mainly an Asianaudience? And how do we identify these?Even the issue of which countries comprise Asia is notso easy to determine anymore, if you consider all theclusters that describe themselves as Asian. I am sure wecan all identify the ten members of ASEAN. Perhaps,you know that SEAMEO is ASEAN plus One, withthe addition of Timor Leste. Perhaps, some of you canalso describe the coverage of the club for Asia PacificEconomic Cooperation (APEC).The term Asia-Pacific is interesting. It can be understoodto mean a group larger than Asia, including boththe countries on the Asian continent and the islandcountries of the Pacific Ocean. Grammatically, it canalso be correctly interpreted as limiting membership tocountries on the Asian land mass that have access to thePacific. APEC takes the narrower definition; UNESCOthe expanded view. But last year, the AustralianMinistry of Education and Training convened aconference of Asia-Pacific Education Ministers, andthe intended territorial scope appears even bigger thanthat of UNESCO, extending from Turkey in the westto the Pacific Islands in the east, with Brazil enjoyingObserver status.I will concede your familiarity with these groups. But Ibelieve I can safely bet the house against anyone namingthe countries that can participate in the Asian Gamesand those that can receive financial assistance fromthe Asian Development Bank. I will even offer a hint:APEC has 21 members; the Asian Games fielded teamsfrom 42 countries; ADB includes 48 Asian membercountries.I think we now all accept that nations and their claimednational territories are political and psychologicalconstructs. In Benedict Anderson’s memorable phrase,nations are “imagined communities.” Their boundariesare determined by historical accident, established bythe vision and aggressiveness of leaders, the fortunes ofwar and the incompetence or brilliance of contendingdiplomats.One of the first things we learned, as students of SoutheastAsian history, was the World War II provenance of theterm—Lord Louis Mountbatten had established theheadquarters of his Southeast Asia Command in Kandyin Ceylon or Sri Lanka. Despite once bearing the nameand its historical and contemporary religious links withBurma and Thailand, Sri Lanka remains outside anygrouping of Southeast Asian countries.The concept of nations as imagined communitieshas equal relevance to both Europe and Asia. SomeEuropean weather maps reportedly end abruptly atnational borders; these would not be very helpfulto meteorologists. Somewhat similar is the practicefollowed by some countries of changing the names oftyphoons once they enter national territories. In ourtime, it seems the essential solidity of topography andterrain has melted and become reduced to fluid lineson maps drawn by military and political strategists toserve national interests and ambitions. Geopolitics hastrumped Geography.Until recently, we have been able to depend ongeographical origins as a reliable indicator of identity.But intermarriage, migration and, in general, themobility that technology has made possible, have madebirthplace and ethnicity less decisive cultural markers.We can no longer presume that the ethnic Asians weencounter in the United States, Europe and Australianecessarily speak Asian languages. And even whenthey do, their primary political allegiance lies with thecountry where they live. Increasingly we have to thinkin terms of hyphenated identities: Filipino-American,or Dutch-Indonesian, or Thai-German, and so forth.Still, the hyphenated population, though it may beincreasing, remains small. Indeed, the process ofintegrating them into the imagined community oftheir adopted nation is one of the complex problems towhich globalization has given prominence. Despite therise of multinational institutions, the emergence of aglobal market and the expansion of the world-wide web,which defies national boundaries, the predicted demiseof nation-states remains only a distant possibility.The emergence of the European Union had at one timesuggested that regional associations might pave the wayfor an inclusive and cohesive political institution biggerthan the nation-state. But the opposition to the EUconstitution in France and the Netherlands has appliedthe brakes on the movement towards a stronger politicalunion.The SEAMEO ministers of education and ASEANitself have been pushing for a program to promote astronger sense of ASEAN-ness and a more cohesiveSoutheast Asian socio-cultural community. But none ofthe member countries see this advocacy as in any wayAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows