The International Relations of South East Asia
| Code | School | Level | Credits | Semesters |
| PHIR4007 | Politics and International Relations | 4 | 20 | Autumn Malaysia |
- Code
- PHIR4007
- School
- Politics and International Relations
- Level
- 4
- Credits
- 20
- Semesters
- Autumn Malaysia
Summary
The highly diverse states of Southeast Asia (SEA) are attempting to manage their relations with the increasingly rivalrous great powers that surround them while simultaneously undertaking an ambitious community-building project. A sense of vulnerability pushes them together, but residual problems many dating from the colonial and Cold War eras just as vigorously threaten to pull them apart.
States are joined on the regional stage by multi-national companies, actively engaged publics, and insurgent groups fighting in protracted subnational conflicts. The social, political, cultural, and economic waves that emanate from both inside and outside the region produce both change and resistance to change.
By focusing on the actors, structures, and processes that animate Southeast Asia, this module will enable students to go behind the often sensational media headlines they read in regional coverage, and analyse the region in a more rigorous and coherent way.
Target Students
PHIR MA students Available to JYA/Erasmus students.
Classes
- One 2-hour seminar each week for 12 weeks
- One 1-hour lecture each week for 12 weeks
Assessment
- 20% Coursework 1: 1,000 words summary/critique/comparison of two journal articles
- 30% Coursework 2: 1,500 words policy brief
- 50% Coursework 3: 2,500 words essay
Educational Aims
By the end of the module, students will be able to: •demonstrate core knowledge of the international relations of Southeast Asia (to be assessed by coursework)•demonstrate a broad understanding of how these international relations can be analysed and explained in different ways according to different political perspectives (to be assessed by coursework)•relate this knowledge to the world they encounter in daily news bulletins (to be practiced in in-class discussion)Learning Outcomes
a)Knowledge and understanding of:
•the dynamics affecting SEA’s international relations;
•the different theoretical ways that can be used to approach them
b)Intellectual skills, such as:
•the ability to identify, express, and critique the key argument in a journal article;
•the ability to recognize, assess, and apply a variety of approaches and methods for the study of SEA;
•the ability to engage in academic debate about SEA and its international relations.
c)Professional/Practical skills, such as:
•evidence gathering and evaluation;
•summarizing and presenting information and ideas orally;
•constructing and clearly expressing an argument in writing;
•independent learning
d)Transferable & Key skills, such as:
•the ability to extract key ideas and arguments from a text, and relate them to their own lives and other learning experiences (to be practised in class reading preparation)
•the capacity to engage in a structured and well informed discussion about complex questions (to be practised in class discussions);
•the ability to write in a structured and concise way for a policy audience (to be assessed in the policy brief assignment);
•the capacity to research and argue a longer piece of work for an academic audience (to be assessed in the coursework essay);
•the capacity to reflect on the relationship between theory and practice (to be assessed in all the written assignments).
•familiarity with academic databases and other forms of electronic research tools
Conveners
- Ying Chan Ho