From Pulau to Pulo: Archipelagic perspectives on Southeast Asian Chinese ethnicity from the Philippines and Indonesia

ABSTRACT Southeast Asia is an important region for working through questions of Chineseness. It is, however, a notoriously heterogeneous region, and conclusions derived from some parts of it can be of limited applicability elsewhere. This special issue offering empirically-grounded, multi-disciplinary research engages with and expands on existing scholarship on Southeast Asia’s Chinese. By focusing on Indonesia and the Philippines, the articles in this special issue investigate diverse models of being Chinese in Southeast Asia and depart from the familiar paradigms offered by Singapore and Malaysia, where ethnic Chinese populations are in the highest proportions and hold significant political power, and where Anglophone institutions transmute formulations of Chineseness into academic and political discourse. In so doing, we call for recognising diversity within Chinese communities in the region, not only among localised, hybrid expressions of Chineseness, but in the coexistence of both hybridity and persistent identification with Chineseness in multiple forms.