Southeast Asia Seminar 2012: “Cities and Cultures in Southeast Asia”

Date: November 20-23th, 2012
Venue: Cebu Philippines

Southeast Asia has some of the world’s largest and most vibrant cities. Roughly 250
million people or over 40% of the population in the region live in urban areas.
Mega-cities like Manila, Jakarta, and Bangkok are home to more than ten million
people each, and serve as administrative and financial centers as well as migration,
transportation and communication hubs. Singapore is touted as a “global city,” a status
to which Kuala Lumpur also aspires. “Secondary cities” like Cebu, Chiang Mai, Penang
and Surabaya have histories and cultures that are as rich as those of the national capitals
from whose shadows they are emerging as part of larger, polycentric urban systems
(including corridors) and networks across the region.

This seminar looks at the social and cultural processes and practices out of which cities emerge, grow, decay, and change. Cities are concentrations of people, goods, capital, and infrastructure in space and across time, but they are also sites of power; objects of fantasies, aspirations, and “planning”; cultural, national and world “heritage”; subjects of literature, cinema, and other forms of representation; arenas of contestation, struggle, and negotiation involving individuals, groups, communities, and institutions; and base points for cultural interaction, social innovation, and economic and political transformation. The blurring of boundaries between cities and countrysides, and increasing connections and hierarchies within and between cities and between megacities and second-tier and smaller urban areas are making themselves felt in the culture, politics, and economy of Southeast Asian countries. The speakers in this seminar will address vital issues and concerns relating to the history of cities and heritage conservation, the role of communities in the making and remaking of cities, and ways in which politics and economy inform urbanization and are played out in the city. The seminar includes a one-day field trip within Cebu City.

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