Scope and Goals:

The project explores how material spaces are transformed into places through different approaches: descriptively and with rich detail about how a place stands as a unique entity of life, culture, and environment on its own or as part of a large place; through social constructivism, which focuses on the social construction of the place and the connections between place, meaning and power; or phenomenologically, which highlights the experience of a place (such as a museum). Through concrete examples, the project investigates how Southeast Asians have engaged in placemaking, and what placemaking reveals about the contexts and contests in which the meanings of places are produced and the communities that produce these meanings.

Participants, Affiliation, Title of Paper:

  1. Maitrii Aung-Thwin, National University of Singapore, Introduction
  2. Idham Bachtiar Setiadi, Ministry of Education and Culture (Indonesia), Making Place in Barus, Nineteenth Century
  3. Theara Thun, Kampuchea Krom: Post-independent Cambodia’s Territorial Discourse of the ‘Lower-land’
  4. Henny Warsilah, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Place-making Process, Cultural and Identity Formation of Urban Community-Based Coastal Ecology: Case Communities of Kenjeran and Bulak, Surabaya, Indonesia
  5. Woo Kuan Heong, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Placemaking through Affordable Housing Scheme in Penang: The Perspective of Public Administration
  6. Achariya Choowonglert, Naresuan University, Reinventing the Local: Cultural Politics of Place-making of Mai Chau District, Northwest Upland of Vietnam
  7. Nguyen To Lan, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Religion and Place-making in Southern Vietnam
  8. Muhammad Arafat Bin Mohamad, National University of Singapore, Landscape of Grief: Place-making in Thailand’s Deep South
  9. Maria Serena I. Diokno, University of the Philippines, Burial Sites and Controversies of Meaning
  10. Rommel Rodriguez, University of the Philippines, From a Space of Repression to a Place of Subversion: Reclaiming Freedom through Art of Political Prisoners in the Philippines
  11. Farabi Fakih, University of Gadjah Mada, Placing Bandung: Historical Communities and Narrative Production in Decentralized Indonesia
  12. Rommel Curaming, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Fast food as a Transnational Place: Filipino Transnationalism and Jollibee in Brunei Darussalam
  13. Margaret Wong, University of Yangon, China Town in Myanmar through Ages