Gabriel FACAL

Deputy Director from 2022

Deputy director from 2022

gabriel.facal irasec.com

Gabriel FACAL is an anthropologist, currently deputy director of the Research Institute for Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC, Bangkok), and associate researcher at the Southeast Asia Center (CASE, Paris). His work focuses on the emergence of agroecology in insular Southeast Asia. He draws on two case studies in Indonesia and comparative work in collaboration with research teams deployed in several countries in the region (Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand). His main field of research concerns the transformation of agroforestry practices among the indigenous Kanekes society in West Java. A second field of research focuses on a Koranic school engaged in permaculture, within the social movement of the Sunda Peasants Union (SPP), which aims to be a leader in sustainable agriculture in the archipelago. G. Facal is jointly developing a research consortium on agroecological transition as part of an initiative entitled Cross-Sectoral Approach to Research on Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia (CROSSDEV-SEA). These activities converge with the ANR PRC AltLife-SSEA (“Alternative life projects in rural South & Southeast Asia : Reflecting on post-development through a study of diverse emplaced collectives”), of which he is co-leader.

Selected bibliography

Personal research book

• 2018 : La foi et la force. L’art martial silat de Banten en Indonésie, Paris, Indes Savantes, 226 p. (Indonesian version, 2016 : Keyakinan dan Kekuatan. Seni Bela Diri Silat Banten [Faith and strength. The martial art of silat from Banten, Indonesia], Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia, 315 p.).

Book editing

• 2024 : Gabriel Facal, Elsa Lafaye de Micheaux and Astrid Norén-Nilsson (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Political Norm Dynamics in Southeast Asia – Overlapping Registers and Shifting Practices, 34 chapters, Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, 636 p. (open access, licence CC-BY-NC).

Editing of special issue of peer-reviewed journal

• 2025 : Gabriel Facal and Catherine Scheer (Eds.), “Engaged research in contemporary Southeast Asia. Scholar-activist reflections on a fraught practice”, TRaNS : Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, n° 10, vol. 2 (Q1).

Articles in internationally refereed journals

• 2024 : « Légitimités territoriales à Makili : Négociations coutumières et alliance matrimoniale », Archipel, n° 108, pp. 61-81 (Q2).
• 2023 : « Indonésie, l’ancrage d’une centralité en Indo-Pacifique », Revue Internationale et Stratégique, vol. 129, pp. 115-124 (Q4).
• 2022 : “Biopolitics of invulnerability. The regionalist martial arts groups in Southeast Asia”, Indonesia and the Malay World (Q2).
• 2021a : « Initiatives morales et déviations pratiques en Indonésie – Un médiateur politique entre intermédiation et accumulation », Journal des anthropologues, vol. 166-167, pp. 77-97.
• 2021b : « Grandeur, décadence et legs d’une « femme forte ». Au cœur d’une oligarchie familiale en Indonésie », Terrain [Portrait] (Q2).
• 2020 : « Dialogues et questionnements sur l’éthique en anthropologie. Une charte éthique en débat. Lecture critique de l’ouvrage : Plemmons, Dena et Barker, Alex W. (dir.), Anthropological Ethics in Context. An Ongoing Dialogue, Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press, 2016, 249 p. », Lectures Anthropologiques. Revue de comptes rendus critiques, vol. 7.

Book chapter

• 2024 : Gabriel Facal (corresponding author), Catherine Scheer, Sarah Anaïs Andrieu, Joel Mark Baysa-Barredo, Giuseppe Bolotta, Gloria Truly Estrelita, Rosalia Sciortino, Saskia E. Wieringa, and Wijayanto, “Cross-sectoral dialogues with social movements in Southeast Asia. Translating values, affects, and practices in a polymorphic region”, in Laurence Cox, Alberto Arribas, Sutapa Chattopadhyay, Anna Szolucha (Eds.), Handbook on Research Methods and Applications in Social Movements, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 102-114.
• 2020 : « La diffusion du salafisme en Asie du Sud-Est - Réceptions locales d’une pensée globalisante », in Claire Thi Liên Tran and Christine Cabasset (Eds.), L’Asie du Sud-Est 2020. Bilan, enjeux et perspectives, Bangkok-Paris, IRASEC-Indes Savantes, pp. 75-94.

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