Report on the IRASEC Winter School 2024
Research training
Sustainable Development Studies in Southeast Asia (SUDSSEA)
Bangkok & Manila, November 25-December 7, 2024
The Institute for Research on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC) held its third Winter Doctoral School from November 25 to December 7, 2024. Dedicated to sustainable development studies in Southeast Asia, the two-week event brought together 20 students in Bangkok and Manila. The organizing committee was made up of IRASEC, the main coordinator, and two partners : the Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology at Thammasat University (Bangkok), and the Center for Integrative Development Studies (CIDS) at the University of the Philippines Diliman (Philippines).
Participants
The organizing committee received 45 applications and selected 20, including M2 students, young PhD students and professionals : 12 women and 8 men from Cambodia (3), Indonesia (1), the Philippines (5), Thailand (4), Vietnam (4), India (2) and the Netherlands (1). Coming from different national backgrounds and with very different profiles, the students are familiarizing themselves with other university practices and discovering new, albeit neighboring, cultural environments, while exploring the local specificities of a common theme.
Supervision and content
The 26 trainers who took turns over the two weeks came from a wide range of backgrounds : universities (U. Thammasat, U. de Chiang Mai, U. Mahidol ; Silpakorn U. ; U. of the Philippines Diliman, Ateneo de Manila ; U. Indonesia, Institut Pertanian Bogor ; Sciences Po Toulouse), research (IRD), development structures (AFD), international agencies (UN-ESCAP) and NGOs, most of them to run one or two course sessions. The main coordinator was Dr Gabriel FACAL, development anthropologist and deputy director of IRASEC.
The courses covered a variety of topics : regional cooperation for sustainable development, financing the socio-ecological transition, climate change, energy transition, local impact of dams or mining, environmental justice, land rights of indigenous communities, archaeology of agroforestry practices, etc. Various methodological tools were explored (role-playing for decision-making in commons management, participatory mapping approaches). Various courses focused on the epistemological and ethical issues involved in the co-construction of knowledge and engaged research.
In line with their thematic interests and to carry out the field exercises, the students were divided into groups of four within five working groups on the following themes : political economy and finance ; risk governance ; knowledge and encapacitation ; informality and subalternity ; land and the commons.
Eight sites were visited by groups of trainees and their supervisors : inter-religious coexistence in Sathorn (Bangkok), an urban community set up along a railroad line (Bangkok), an industrial waste treatment mega-site (Rayong). In Manila, the sites included a slum affected by typhoons and flooding (Quezon City) ; a fishing community destroyed by the reclamation of Manila Bay (Cavite) ; urban transport drivers mobilized in the face of the electric conversion of their vehicles ; a union of informal women workers ; and urban peasants threatened with eviction (Quezon City).
The various courses and fieldwork provided an opportunity to set out the perspectives on development, sometimes under great tension, of local communities, public decision-makers, donors and private players.
Results and outlook
- Extension of the training program : the students were very cohesive at the end of the two-week course, and unanimously expressed a desire to deepen and even renew their initial research questions. Publication of the Winter School proceedings, based on the work carried out by the student groups, is planned for 2025.
- Contribution to the establishment of research networks in Southeast Asia and strengthening of links between the two partner institutions, across a vast array of scienrtific disciplines : anthropology, sociology, geography, political science, economy, socio-linguistics and archeology.
- Cooperation : strengthening links between IRASEC and its local university partners (whose investment was quite remarkable), but also with UN-ESCAP, IRD and AFD.
- The success of this winter school, following those of 2022 (Urban Studies in Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai-Yogyakarta) and 2023 (Migration in Southeast Asia, Bangkok-Kuala Lumpur), confirms the choice made by IRASEC’s management in 2021 to make this high-level training activity a structuring project for the Institute, complementing its other research and publication activities.
- For the years 2025 and 2026, two other doctoral schools are being considered and set up on the following themes : minority languages in Southeast Asia (2025) ; health and social sciences in Southeast Asia (2026).
20 December 2024