Event details

Speaker | Mu’izz Abdul Khalid, 2024-25 Fung Global Fellow, will discuss his research on how, in recent decades, there has been a rise in youth and student activism throughout East and Southeast Asia, impacting even Brunei, the last absolutist kingdom in the Asia-Pacific. Brunei's restrictive political system, however, has shaped a certain form of activism, characterized by subtle political participation and a blurred distinction between social advocacy and traditional activism. This seminar explores this "quiet activism" in Brunei, extending the concept from its origins in feminist literature to the realm of political science. Through archival research and interviews, he demonstrates that this phenomenon emerged alongside the government's adoption of neoliberal economic policies in the new millennium, which positioned youth as crucial for development. Furthermore, this quiet activism is deeply rooted in the kingdom's history, particularly the complex interplay between colonial and royal forces that shaped a dual identity of citizen and subject in the late 1950s. This hybrid positionality, termed "civic subjecthood," compels Bruneian youth and students to constantly negotiate and make trade-offs with the absolutist state — balancing their status as subjects while expressing ideas of citizenship in the subtlest way possible.

Meredith Weiss, 2024-2025 Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and professor of political science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs at Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York, will serve as the discussant.

Discussant | Meredith Weiss, Professor and Director of SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium, Department of Political Science; International Affairs and Visiting Scholar at Stanford's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC).