Ethnicity, Religion, Conflict and Violence in Postcolonial South and Southeast Asia: A Comparative, Interdisciplinary Study

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The independent nation-states that emerged in South and Southeast Asia during post-war decolonisation faced the difficult task of creating, out of all their diversity, a national people. Since the end of the colonial era nation-building projects have clashed violently with the identity politics of heterogeneous ethnic and religious communities, for these regions are home to some of the longest-standing ethnic and religious conflicts in the world. Given the ubiquity and longevity of such ethnic and religious conflict, it is clear that the particularity of each national case notwithstanding, there are more general factors at work, which would be revealed by a comparative study.This project establishes a network of 20 South and Southeast Asia specialists from Japan and the UK to: investigate the causes and dynamics of ethnic and religious conflict in South and Southeast Asia; identify commonalities across these national and regional differences; arrive at provisional conclusions on the salience and relative importance of these commonalities; and thus also identify those issues that warrant further and research-intensive enquiry in subsequent collaborations. Its aim is to bring into conversation and collaboration, through a series of workshops, the research that has already been done, but usually with reference to a specific country or region, rather than comparatively and across disciplines; and in the absence of collaboration between British and Japanese scholars.Led by professors Seth and Nakamizo, who have previously collaborated, this project gathers a unique network of 20 experts on ethnic and religious conflict (including scholars of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines) to investigate these more general factors and causes, and identify those factors and issues that warrant further and intensive research in subsequent collaborations, with a view to identifying measures that mitigate against violence and promote justice and peace. The 10 scholars from each country have been chosen for their expertise, but also with an eye to mixing senior scholars with early career researchers, and to achieving a rough balance of both genders. Its aims are:1 - Networking and Knowledge Creation: To connect a network of UK based and Japan based scholars through 4 workshops where information and research is shared in a directed manner and with a shared goal, that of investigating the causes and dynamics of ethnic and religious conflict in South Asia and Southeast Asia. 2 - Outputs and Impact: To produce a special journal issue on this theme, with contributions by a number of the participants. In addition, participants will be encouraged to produce collaborative articles on the basis of joint interests discovered in the course of the workshops. Non-academic stakeholders from government and civil society will be invited to send representatives to all workshops. A website will make summaries of the papers delivered, as well as of each workshop's proceedings, available in Japanese and English to non-academic and academic audiences. An interactive blog will be set up by participants to share their research with a wide audience in an accessible manner.3 - Laying the Basis for Subsequent Collaboration: We bring existing specialist expertise within a comparative frame, and into a collaborative conversation, in order to identify those areas and issues that require sustained and ongoing collaborative enquiry (including new and intensive research of a type not funded by this call), to be funded by potential future bilateral UK-Japan SSH research calls. Bringing scholars working on shared regions and themes is thus intended not only to produce a network for, and produce knowledge specific to this project, but also to lay the foundations for subsequent projects that arise out of this collaboration.