‘Writing’ and sustaining Asian regionalism: interpreting the official discourse of ASEAN
Issued Date
2024-01-01
Resource Type
ISSN
0967828X
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85191311327
Journal Title
South East Asia Research
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SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
South East Asia Research (2024)
Suggested Citation
Houston K. ‘Writing’ and sustaining Asian regionalism: interpreting the official discourse of ASEAN. South East Asia Research (2024). doi:10.1080/0967828X.2024.2339832 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/98191
Title
‘Writing’ and sustaining Asian regionalism: interpreting the official discourse of ASEAN
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Abstract
This article considers ASEAN from the perspective of regional identity-building and organizational fixity. This ten-nation bloc is generally considered a well-intentioned but flawed exemplar of inter-state community building. The article analyses how ASEAN has been ‘fixed’ as a social and political fact within the Asian geopolitical space. It reflects on the survivability of ASEAN as a social fact despite the centrifugal pressures of national interests and the impact of global forces. The findings indicate that ASEAN has achieved the effects of fixity and stability by constructing an interior political imaginary through a multifaceted discursive strategy. ASEAN’s ‘constitutive outside’ includes, inter alia, the transversal differentiation of its imagined interiority from external entities and political spaces, the focus on diachronically defined regional problem solving, the imperative of development, and through the emphasis on intra-mural connectivity along lower-level policy-making. The implications for the study of ASEAN and regional organizations are considered. Critically, the increasing salience of more functional and sectoral policy tiers dealing with transversal policy questions, compared to the more sensitive intergovernmental domains of political-security matters, is notable within the bloc’s official discourse.