Dr David Camroux

Dr David Camroux
CERI-Sciences Po, Paris, France

’Janus Revisited, Brahma Visited’: Nationalism(s) and Regionalism(s), Perspectives from Asia and Europe

Abstract:

A great deal of the literature on regional constructions, not only within Europe, but also in relation to the most interesting case at the present, namely East Asia, makes no distinction between "regionalisation" and "regionalism" This paper is based on a clear distinction between "regionalisation" as akin to nation-building and stato-national construction and "regionalism" as akin to nationalism, ie a process of identity creation. By teasing out many of the elements of contemporary debate on nationalism, particularly that between the constructivists who see nations as, to use Benedict Anderson's phrase, "imagined communities", and ethno-essentialists who see nationalism finding its roots in primordial ethnic allegiances, this chapter will seek to look at these distinctions in relation to a sense of "regional allegiance". By situating ideas of an Asian community in the "longue durée" - and bringing it into the focus provided by the study of nationalism - the tensions and ambivalences in contemporary developments in Asia become both more apparent and more explicable. I will suggest that, like nationalism, regionalism is, as Tom Nairn claims, Janus faced, ie looking both to the past and to the future. Yet with this temporal reference, regionalism also has a spatial dimension, looking inwards towards the nation and outwards towards a globalized world. Like the Hindu divinity, Brahma it possesses four faces.

Biographical note:

Dr David Camroux is Senior Research Associate within the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) At Sciences Po he is also a Senior Lecturer seconded to the Institut d'Études Politiques (IEP) in Paris where he teaches on contemporary Southeast Asian society. His previous positions at Sciences Po were as Director of Studies at the Centre des Hautes Études sur l'Afrique et l'Asie Modernes (CHEAM), from 1994-1998, and Executive Director of the Asia-Europe Centre from 1998-2004. Prior to this, he held positions at the University of Paris XII (Val de Marne) and the University of Paris VIII (St Denis).

Dr Camroux studied for his first degree at the University of Sydney and his doctorate in Paris at the Sorbonne. He is the author of numerous articles on Southeast Asian and Australasian politics and history. He is at present preparing a book on foreign relations, nationalism and regionalism in Southeast Asia.

Dr Camroux has been since September 1994 the European Corresponding Editor of The Pacific Review (London: Routledge). He is a regular commentator on Southeast Asian and Pacific affairs for French radio and television as well as for the press. For his academic achievements he was made a "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes académiques" in July 1993 and a "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" in May 1997.

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