Program on Environment, Society and Culture

About Program on Environment, Society and Culture

The members will look in a manner that is at once focused and broadsweeping at the ecological environment and the human environment; at history, culture, and society; and at politics and economics, in Southeast Asia. A variety of issues will be examined, including the one of sustainability, faced by Southeast Asian society and communities in the context of various dynamics, at the level of living space and at the site of production, whether in farming, forestry or fishing villages or in the towns and cities, and also from a multilayered viewpoint: that of the household, community and region, up to the level of the state, and even the globe. As the members acquire the tools, including language, to learn about their area of study, they will learn how to consider matters empirically, on the basis of fieldwork, which will help them obtain new insights into the particular features of the region.