Context and Method in Southeast Asian Politics

This essay introduces and evaluates a central debate about context sensitivity in Southeast Asian political studies. Within this diverse field, there is no agreement about what context means, or how to be sensitive to it. I develop the idea of unit context (traditionally, the area studies concern) and population context (traditionally, the comparative politics concern) as parallel organizing principles in Southeast Asian political studies. The unit context/population context distinction does not track the now-familiar debates of qualitative versus quantitative analysis, nor debates about positivist epistemology and its interpretivist alternatives, nor even political science versus area studies. Context is not method, nor epistemology, nor discipline. Rather, the core distinction between unit-focused and population-focused research lies in assumptions about the possibility of comparison, or what methodologists call unit homogeneity. While I conclude on an optimistic note that a diverse Southeast Asian political studies (embracing many disciplines and many methodologies) is possible, the fact remains that unit context and population context are fundamentally incommensurate as frameworks for approaching Southeast Asian politics, and that population context is the superior approach.

東南亞政治的語境和方法

本論文評介了東南亞政治研究中一個關於語境敏感性問題的核心爭議。在此多樣化的研究領域中，學者們對於何為語境、以及如何對語境保持敏感等問題都並未達成一致。我在此提出，單元語境（這是傳統上區域研究所關注的）以及總體語境（傳統上比較政治學研究所關注的）系東南亞政治研究中兩個相互平行的組織原則。此單元語境/總體語境之分異既非因循現已為大家熟知的定量與定性研究之爭，也非承襲有關實証主義認識論及與其對立的闡釋主義方法的探討，甚至不關乎政治科學與地域研究之間的學科之爭。語境既非方法，也非認識論，更不是學科。確切地說，以單元為分析重點和以總體為分析重點的研究之間的關鍵差異在於兩者在比較之可能性問題上的種種預設，也即方法論學者所謂的單元異質性問題。盡管我在結尾中樂觀地表示一個多樣化（包容諸多學科和諸多方法）的東南亞政治研究領域似乎可能，但不可否認，作為研究東南亞政治問題的分析框架，單元語境和總體語境從根本上來說是不相兼容的；相比之下，總體語境更勝一籌。

Translated from English by Li Guo