ABSTRACT
According to Anderson (1990: 22), the Javanese see power as the ‘intangible, mysterious and divine energy that animates the universe’. But despite its status as one of the most pressing and ubiquitous issues ‘animating’ research and debate in contemporary scholarship on Southeast Asia, ‘power’ as an analytic concept seems no less mysterious and no more tangible than it does for the people of Java. It is, of course, relatively uncontroversial to suggest that ‘power’ lies at the core of the innumerable far-reaching changes that Southeast Asia has undergone in the last half century. Amongst these has been the rise of postcolonial nation-states; rapid industrialization; economic growth; brutal conflicts; and genocide. The region has also witnessed the emergence of new religious and political movements that draw deeply on local traditions while proposing new forms of personhood, politics or civil society. But quite how power should be conceived of in any such instance is a matter of intense academic discussion. Should it be understood as a brute military force, as the structural violence of capitalist political economies or as a more capillary ‘disciplinary’ influence on religious and political subjectivities? Or should it be elucidated with reference to ‘cultural’ frameworks of symbolism and meaning? The debate is provocative and ongoing. However, as scholarly notions of power are used with ever-increasing nuance and subtlety to analyse Southeast Asian societies, an important perspective risks falling out of view – the ways that power is understood by the people of Southeast Asia themselves.
