The Politics of Rights and Southeast Asia

This Element is for practitioners, policy-makers and researchers interested in the rights-culture-politics nexus in Southeast Asia. It investigates the contested nature of rights, and explores the debates over who are entitled to rights, what sorts of rights they should have, and even who get to decide on such issues.

What do rights mean in Southeast Asia? How do differently situated individuals, social groups, and institutions, make sense of and deploy concepts of rights? How do their concepts relate to religious beliefs, norms, and practices that underpin social hierarchy and relations, as well as experiences with and memories of political conflict and post-colonial developments? What are the consequences of asserting rights? This Element takes a ''politics of rights'' approach. The approach treats rights not merely as substantive or normative meanings found in international law, regional instruments and domestic constitutional documents, but as political processes: Rights come to life through ongoing series of social interactions. The approach in this Element helps readers understand the often contradictory findings about rights in a manner sensible to political subjectivities and helps readers make sense of why rights are sometimes helpful to Southeast Asians who appeal to them, sometimes disappointing, and often paradoxically both.