“De/Centering Southeast Asia” is the 5th SEASIA Biennial International Conference. It will be hosted by the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, one of the member institutions of the Consortium of Southeast Asian Studies in Asia (SEASIA). The conference is intended to be platform for centering Southeast Asian scholarship within Asia, by shifting one’s analytical position away from a dominant center towards the periphery to strengthen expertise, amplify voices, and resist subordination in these peripheries. De/Centering challenges dominant narratives and perspectives historically centered in the “West” and its gaze on Southeast Asia, and highlights the diverse and complex experiences, histories and cultures of the region as told by Southeast Asians themselves.
“De/Centering Southeast Asia” is the 5th SEASIA Biennial International Conference. It will be hosted by the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, one of the member institutions of the Consortium of Southeast Asian Studies in Asia (SEASIA). The conference is intended to be platform for centering Southeast Asian scholarship within Asia, by shifting one’s analytical position away from a dominant center towards the periphery to strengthen expertise, amplify voices, and resist subordination in these peripheries. De/Centering challenges dominant narratives and perspectives historically centered in the “West” and its gaze on Southeast Asia, and highlights the diverse and complex experiences, histories and cultures of the region as told by Southeast Asians themselves.
Dr. Syed Farid Alatas, a Malaysian national, is a Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He lectured at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies prior to joining NUS. He works on historical sociology, the sociology of social science, the sociology of religion, and inter-religious dialogue. He is a leading voice in critical scholarship, advancing the intellectual movement for an autonomous social science tradition in Asia, freeing scholarship from domination by a hegemonic external intellectual tradition rooted in colonialism. Alatas is the author of Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (2014, Routledge Advances in Sociology) and Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism (2006, Sage).
(b. 1941) Trained in Composition and Conducting at the University of the Philippines, got his Master of Music degree at Indiana University and his Ph.D. degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was a full fellow at the Summer Courses in New Music at Darmstadt, Germany, and undertook post-graduate work in Ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois under grants from the Ford Foundation and the Asian Cultural Council. He was Chair and now Member of Honor of the Asian Composers League and elected Vice President of the International Music Council at UNESCO from 2001 to 2005, the first Filipino in the five-person Praesidium of the highest governing body of the international music community. He was awarded National Artist for Music in 2014.