The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, is a community of multiple identities. Over time, its citizens' loyalties were formed around national and transnational frameworks involving ethnic, religious, and ideological affinities. In the post-independence period, they were affected by decolonization, nation-building, the Cold War, globalization, and China’s rise. As a result, the region is emerging as a confluence of competing and overlapping identities.

In recent years, new collective imaginations about the region's future have appeared, committing member states to directions beyond the politico-economic realm. Yet there is a risk that more exclusive visions, based on national, religious, ethnic, or other allegiances, will hold sway.

This book unpacks these competing identities. Rich in ethnographic and historical material, it examines identities shaped by generational markers, transnational linkages, and shared experiences of violence.