The Dynamics of Processes of Social Change in Southeast Asia : Inter-Ethnic Relationship, Mobility, and Cultural Reconfiguration.

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During the three-year project period, seven Japanese members and two overseas participants were involved in field-based research, centered on their respective field sites. In addition, members were able to extend their research both in time and space, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, as well as conducting library research in the U.S. Through this research, we were able to conduct basic research on the historical processes of inter-ethnic relationship and mobility as well as religious dynamics and cultural reconfiguration. By extending our temporal and spatial perspectives, we have been able to include comparative perspectives. At the end of each fiscal year, we met to check on our framework and orientation.Against the background of the rapid changes in the past three decades, which have been caused by the global fluidity of capital, people, and culture, it is no longer possible to work solely from the perspective of a nation state. With this in mind, we have looked across national boundaries with the key concepts of inter-ethnic relationship, mobility and cultural reconfiguration, so as to better understand the processes of change in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious region. By so doing we have been able to re-position each our own previously held understanding of local issues, to a larger systematic understanding of social, political and economic changes. By mutual interchange of ideas, each of us was able to depict the inter-ethnic relationship in the construction of nation state, and further realize and depict that by factors such as religion and introduction of globalized economy, such dynamics cannot be understood within a singular nation state framework.