As Benedict Anderson once observed, “normal voting is in many ways a peculiar activity”:
One joins a queue of people whom one does not typically know, to take a turn to enter a solitary space, where one pulls levers or marks pieces of paper, and then leaves the site with the same calm discretion with which one enters it - without questions being asked. It is almost the only political act imaginable in perfect solitude, and it is completely symbolic.
With alarm bells ringing in recent years about democracy’s decline, the election experience is more closely watched than ever. But how just much can elections tell us? The panelists in this session consider historical, linguistic and cultural contexts as a means of exploring the diverse ways in which electoral practices are framed, interpreted and enacted in one of the most richly varied regions of the world: Southeast Asia. With experts presenting case studies from Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, scholars will not only ask how the elections are events that point to the future, but also how they presuppose cultural assumptions rooted in the past.