Southeast Asia Spotlight - 10/11/24 - Seven Questions for Southeast Asia with Richard Yarrow

Richard Yarrow
Research Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School

FOCUSING ON THE PARTS THAT PERTAIN TO SOUTHEAST ASIA, WHAT IS THE FOCUS OF YOUR ACADEMIC WORK, AND HOW DID YOU ARRIVE AT IT?

I study economic development and its challenges or constraints in the region. Lately, that has included researching monetary policy changes at Thailand's central bank, and the effects of China-Southeast Asia trade and capital flows on the region's economies.

I started working on Southeast Asia themes through a more complicated path. I primarily studied China, but during Covid-19, I was unable to return to the mainland. I went to Singapore instead, lived there for over a year, and from Singapore, traveled across mainland Southeast Asia. I really enjoyed being in Southeast Asia, and I decided to continue focusing on the region.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST UNANSWERED QUESTION IN YOUR RESEARCH?

Recently, I have been interested in the organizing of central banks in Southeast Asia. Two or three of the countries in Southeast Asia at best only partly use their own currencies, while several other countries have suffered various currency value and inflation shocks, which makes for a more complicated role or reputation for the central bank. Thailand stands out, in that its currency is relatively strong and stable by regional standards, and its central bank has earned a reputation as one of the most professional and independent central banks in Asia. The Bank of Thailand has held that reputation even as Thailand has undergone repeated military coups over the last 20 years-- whereas normally, one might expect coups and elite-level national political chaos to degrade agencies like a central bank. That leads to questions like, has the Bank of Thailand really been independent over the last two decades? And if so, what institutional features, or political networks or alliances, helped the bank preserve its quality, goals, and structure even amid the wider political tumult?

WHAT DISCIPLINE, OTHER THAN YOUR OWN, DO YOU THINK COULD ADD AN INTERESTING DIMENSION TO YOUR WORK AND WHY?

I think there is a lot of fascinating anthropological and sociological work to be done on large businesses, government bureaucracies especially at the local level, and security institutions in Southeast Asia. I can think of a lot of similar work done on businesses in the "Asian tiger" economies and in Japan, and this can and should be extended in Southeast Asia.

HOW WILL THE NEXT GENERATION OF SCHOLARS LOOK AT AND STUDY THE REGION DIFFERENTLY THAN PRIOR GENERATIONS?

Southeast Asia studies has gone through several waves in terms of geography, demography, and topical interest. After the Vietnam War ended, U.S. universities and other institutions lost some interest in the region, leading some brilliant American scholars like Craig Reynolds, David Marr, and James Fox to move to Singapore or Australia, where there were larger clusters interested in Southeast Asia. Now, Southeast Asia studies is growing around the world-- in the U.S., but also notably in China, Korea, and Japan-- so there are more places producing good and wide-ranging Southeast Asia scholarship.

In terms of topics, earlier generations of Western scholars of Southeast Asia heavily focused on matters like communism, geopolitical competition with the Soviet Union, internal civil conflicts, and rural or "peasantry" issues. Today, the first three of those topics are no longer as pressing in most places, while the last one has also faded as large parts of the region have industrialized and digitized. Clearly, geopolitical competition with China will be important to Western scholars of Southeast Asia, but in other respects, I suspect scholarship of Southeast Asia will become more akin to scholarship on Northeast Asia: that is, with more focus on successful policy innovations and business practices; more focus on "modern" social and economic institutions like schools, bureaucracies, finance, and technology; and more focus on how countries in the region see or relate to each other, and not only how they see "great powers" like China or America.

Finally, I think studies of Southeast Asia in the West will transform with the spread of texts written in Southeast Asian languages, made possible by growing numbers of translators and AI. The new accessibility of texts/languages is something prior generations of scholars could never imagine.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE AT HARVARD IN SUPPORT OF SOUTHEAST ASIA STUDIES?

When Ezra Vogel worked to develop the East Asian Studies undergraduate program at Harvard, he was proud to give it a rigorous curriculum of social science on East Asia. Similarly, John King Fairbank's multi-decade goal for East and Southeast Asia studies at Harvard was to have historians, economists, anthropologists, literature scholars, and so forth dedicated to the region and under one roof. Over time, I think that explicit attention to social science on Asia faded somewhat at Harvard.

As Harvard expands in Southeast Asia studies, I think it's important to follow a similar mission of having scholars of many disciplines focused on the region. That should include fostering experts on literature, religion, militaries, economic development, public policy, and so on.

WHAT IS A RECENT BOOK, FILM, OR OTHER MEDIA (ACADEMIC OR OTHERWISE) FROM OR ABOUT SOUTHEAST ASIA THAT YOU RECOMMEND?

One very recent book is Peter Ho's Menagerie (World Scientific, Aug. 2024), a collection of essays in honor of Peter Ho. Ho was for decades at the helm of Singapore's urban development, defense planning, grand strategy, and other policy efforts.

A very grim but fascinating recent fiction production is Girl From Nowhere เด็กใหม่, now entering its third season and available on Netflix.

WHAT IS THE MOST MEMORABLE SOUTHEAST ASIAN MEAL THAT YOU'VE HAD?

Intellectually, my most memorable meals have been with Wang Gungwu in Singapore. Gungwu is now 94 years old, but he often has more energy than I do. I learn so much whenever I meet him-- about Malaysian politics, etymologies of names, transformations of Southeast Asian secondary and higher education, down to the evolution of Singaporean music!

Culinarily, my most memorable experience is from when I got stuck in a ferocious storm in northern Thailand and hid from the rain in an old wooden restaurant. The restaurant was packed with people hurrying to move tables and plates away from the windows, where rain was spraying in; several people and plates were drenched and large electric fans were quickly installed in the remaining dry corners. So my memory is of both the chaotic, vibrant, squeezed, and cozy atmosphere, and of the delicious fish dishes I enjoyed while waiting for the storm to end.