Too Little, Too Late? The Reckoning of Scholar-Activism in Southeast Asia

Type

Single Round Table

Schedule

Session 9
Wed 18:30-20:00 Sala J. J. Linz

Conveners

S.M. (Butet) Manurung University of Amsterdam & Sokola Institute
Wengki Ariando KITLV

Discussant

Diana Suhardiman KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies

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Participants

A. Rugun Sirait Universitas Indonesia
Kota Emas or Golden Island is a short docufiction about two friends, one Papuan, one Javanese, making a film together. Going through the footage they shot, they end up discussing the conflicted relationship between Papua and the rest of Indonesia. The Javanese protagonist, Arief, is also the director of the film. In 2024, he approached me, a film practitioner who is trained in anthropology, to collaborate with him to produce a film on palm oil plantation extractivism in West Papua. Through working together, collaborating, and ‘smelting’ in Kota Emas, we are offering scholarly-activism through artistic practice that is able to circulate important issues internationally in film festival circuits. The role of a producer is then not limited into practical on-set filmmaking, but to remind the filmmaker on their positionality, plan funding, and arrange international circulation of the film to reach audiences that resonates with the topic globally. On the case of Kota Emas, collaborating with artists, scholarly activism that offers multimodal approaches does not need to compensate aesthetics, yet making the film stronger in matters.
Alberta Prabarini Sokola Institute
Across Southeast Asia, the figure of the “scholar-activist” is increasingly celebrated as a bridge between academic knowledge and grassroots change. This paper engages with this proposition while posing a more unsettling question: what forms of knowledge and practice remain unseen when such a bridge is assumed necessary?
Drawing on my work with Sokola Institute, I present a short video that follows the everyday work of volunteer educators engaging with Indigenous communities in Indonesia. Many of these practitioners come from activist backgrounds and rarely operate within formal academic spaces, yet their work enacts ethnographic sensibilities, contextual education paradigm, and locally grounded epistemologies. Knowledge here unfolds through lived interaction rather than formalized theoretical frameworks.
Through this visual and analytical reflection, I explore a central tension: while scholar-activism calls for bridging academia and practice, it may also risk re-centering academic authority by requiring such practices to be translated into scholarly terms. What kinds of social change become visible through this framework, and what remains overlooked?
Positioning this roundtable as a space for critical reflection, I ask whether our field-based interventions are indeed effective, and how the terms of scholar-activism might be reconfigured to better account for the plurality and uneven recognition of knowledge in practice.
Henry Thomas Simarmata Sea Nomads Contact Group / Associated Program for International Law
Sea nomads cultivate their perceptive knowledge of the islands and the sea over generations. What makes this knowledge unique is its grounding in their own nomadic values and experiences. Key elements of this perceptive understanding include navigational routes, dynamic interactions, and the interconnectedness of the islands. This knowledge is expressed through stories, self-identification, songs, habits, “naming names,” poetry, and various cultural expressions. Their knowledge and understanding of space and the ‘ulayat’ (tenurial system) represents a distinctive communal right in the context of current policy developments in multiscalar discussions. This perceptive knowledge becomes an extension of the sea nomads’ identity, linking them to the broader marine ecosystem and diverse communities across Southeast Asia. Recent collaborations between sea nomad communities, researchers, rights groups, policymakers, and artists have enhanced the recognition of the cultural expressions of sea nomads. This reflects a growing vibrancy in their cultural outputs. Simultaneously, sea nomads are evolving and shaping their cultural expressions in contemporary forms. Their songs, literary works, and communicative products including those shared on social media, continue to demonstrate their quest for self-understanding. At the same time, these cultural expressions enrich the sea nomads’ perceptive knowledge, creating a dynamic cycle that shapes their lives in Southeast Asia.
Joseph Edward Alegado Australian National University
This presentation examines the intersections of degrowth, alternatives to development in the Global South, and zero waste. Using Erik Olin Wright’s social-ecological modes of transformation, it studies the critical pathways of degrowth in the Global South with a focus on four crucial themes in the degrowth field: commoning, labor, localization, and participatory decision-making. These themes are explored through fieldwork in two communities in the central Philippines, particularly Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental province and Siquijor province, where zero waste systems were being implemented at the village level. The research uses a political ecology lens and qualitative methodologies, specifically interviews, participant observation, focus-group discussions, and a participatory approach called photovoice.
The study finds that the proponents of zero waste adopted a combination of strategies in advancing zero waste in their respective communities. While Dumaguete City’s zero waste initiatives initially utilized a combination of symbiotic and interstitial transformation, working with existing systems and institutions, participants later shifted toward strategies that worked outside or aimed to reshape existing structures (ruptural transformation) in response to local government resistance. Siquijor primarily worked through symbiotic and interstitial modes of transformation because of strong support from the provincial government. These different strategies show the diverse ways in which the socio-ecological transformations associated with degrowth and zero waste take shape in these two sites in the Global South.
The presentation concludes that social-ecological transformation relies on recognition of North–South inequalities. It also shows that structural inequalities of power within communities can undermine the scope for alternatives to development to flourish. Finally, degrowth thinking in these zero waste communities is articulated in terms of individual and collective aspirations that include zero waste. More broadly, these findings contribute to already existing alternatives to development in the Philippines and potentially the Global South.
Wipawadee Panyangnoi Independent researcher
This paper examines the methodological transformation in my dissertation on the Landbridge project in Ranong, southern Thailand, to interrogate whether academic engagement can meaningfully respond to socio-environmental challenges. It situates the Landbridge within a critical political economy framework as a state-driven policy through which power extends into localities via bureaucratic control and entrenched patronage networks. In Ranong, where kinship ties and tightly knit social relations shape everyday life, these dynamics constrain critical discourse and narrow spaces for dissent.
Initially grounded in conventional methodological approaches, the research—through field encounters with fishers unaware that their fishing grounds had been designated as the Landbridge’s deep-sea port site, and with urban residents who, despite being more informed, remained reluctant to speak under local power pressures—exposed the limits of conventional academic practice. In this moment, a critical shift in positionality occurred: from questioning the ethical and epistemological foundations of researcher-led data extraction under conditions of inequality and constrained expression—toward recognizing the risk of reproducing the very power asymmetries it initially seeks to analyze.
In response, the study adopted an activist research approach grounded in the co-production of knowledge. Through community dialogues, cross-community exchanges, and translocal learning networks, the research process became a locally grounded site of contestation, enabling communities to reinterpret policy, access legal frameworks, and reclaim discursive space. Beyond these approaches, the research engaged in action methods, translating findings into public communication, network-building, and community-led advocacy, through which the first public resistance was mobilized and has since evolved into multiple groups.
In this context, scholar–activism emerges as a counter-hegemonic practice that transforms knowledge into collective agency and re-politicizes development from below.

Abstract

Scholar-activism is defined herein as the active engagement of academic researchers in playing a vital role in analyzing, advocating for, and finding solutions to the complex challenges facing today’s society. It has recently emerged as a prominent and significant phenomenon in various forms. This shift reflects a growing societal imperative for scholars to commit their expertise to political, social, cultural, and environmental causes that transcend the established boundaries of traditional research and pedagogical responsibilities. In practice, scholars provide detailed data and analysis on root causes, then activism acts as a bridge that transforms these findings into policy recommendations, advocacy programs, and public mobilization efforts that have a direct impact on communities in need. Various empirical studies demonstrate that scholar-activism takes the side of the exploited and the oppressed when discussing development. It is embedded in the expanding knowledge and everyday lives of people. It is essential to critically examine questions such as who gets to discuss development, from which platforms and in what manner, whose voices are considered, and the conditions under which various actors engage in development discussions. The development of issues and discussions regarding scholar-activism also serves as a tool in an important movement that demonstrates the dignity of academics, who must stand with groups and issues worthy of championing within the context of extractive development and political regimes. Meanwhile, Southeast Asia is a diverse region: ethnically, economically, and politically, as well as in its religious composition. Many initiatives have emerged in Southeast Asia from scholar-activism, but they remain fragmented across geography, scale, timeframe, and theme. Through this discussion, it is hoped that Southeast Asia, with its exemplary practices in scholar-activism, can become a hub for innovative and impactful research that contributes to regional diplomacy and the development of inclusive, justice and equality, including a situated knowledge hub for global south development and solidarity.