Drawing on empirical research on flows and movements, this study proposes a new look at Southeast Asia. It does not presume the region to be a static regional construct composed of rigidly defined and bounded national, sociocultural, and ecological units. Rather, it tries to locate and reconfigure the nation-states in a fl uid, open system of multidirectional traffic, both within and across boundaries.
In recent years, transnationalism has gained considerable academic and popular currency, but it remains a contested and often unanalyzed concept. The objective of this book is to substantiate transnationalism of Southeast Asia by empirical case studies to better understand its forms, functions, and meanings. The book’s strength lies in the range and multitude of objects studied, covering a diversity of flows: not only of people, goods, and capital, but also of flora and fauna, ideas, practices, diseases, art forms, governmentality, technologies, and symbols. With the participation of multidisciplinary researchers specializing in history, anthropology, international relations, environmental studies, musicology, Chinese studies, microbiology, literature, demography, agronomy, and political science, we examine the physics of flows and metaphysics of social movements entailed by such flows.