Matthew Thomas  1:20
Will Brehm, welcome to FreshEd.

Will Brehm  1:22
Thank you so much, Matthew. It is such a pleasure to be talking with you having this event organized by so many different organizations. To feel connected to Australia once again -it’s just absolutely wonderful to be here. So, thank you so much.

Matthew Thomas  1:35
Absolutely. And it’s such a pleasure. I mean, globalization is derided so often in scholarship, but of course, the technology affords us to be having this conversation across the world today. So, really excited to have you with us. This new book is really exciting, and it focuses a lot on UNESCO Shared Histories Projects. Can you start by just telling us: What is this project? And how did you become interested in it?

Will Brehm  1:58
This book really began when I was finishing up my previous book on Cambodia. And I was working in Cambodia and realizing that the sort of “region” was really becoming part of the conversation inside the education sector. And so, at that time, in about 2015, this was the 2015 point when the Economic Community of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations formed, the end of 2015. And so, there was a lot of conversation about a region being built within Southeast Asia and I was quite interested to understand, what did that mean in terms of education? And so, I started looking around at different projects in different countries and what they were doing in terms of sort of an ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) identity or a regional identity. Just trying to think about how this might intersect with education. And there was very few projects actually that existed that were supporting any notion of a regional identity. The closest I got was the Asian Development Bank had a project called Made in ASEAN which was about promoting sort of production within the ASEAN region. But I did come across a project that was just beginning or had just begun out of UNESCO, Bangkok. And it was called promoting intercultural dialogue and a culture of peace in Southeast Asia, or what we call the Shared Histories Project. And history is important and its plural. It’s not a singular history that UNESCO was talking about. But the practicalities of it were UNESCO Bangkok was running a program to basically design curriculum materials that could then be implemented within member states, if they so choose. And this project was put together from 2013 until 2020. I followed it basically from 2015 until 2020. It was put together by the Culture Unit within UNESCO Bangkok, which I find also fascinating. It wasn’t put together out of the Education Unit. It was funded by the South Korean government, which is also potentially an interesting insight as to why South Korea might be interested in funding such a project. And it ultimately created four units of about 25 lessons. And then, at this point, individual countries are deciding if they should implement any of these units or not. And if so, it’s going to be sort of localized, in a sense, when it actually gets put into different curricula. So, that’s the general idea of what this Shared Histories Project is.

Matthew Thomas  4:18
So, my understanding from reading the book is this actually was not the first time that UNESCO engaged in a project of this nature, although obviously there are particularities of the shared histories project that you’re talking about. Can you tell us a little bit more about the history of UNESCO being involved in this type of work?

Will Brehm  4:36
Yeah. I mean, I think it goes all the way back to the very founding of UNESCO. They were focused on this idea of common heritage. And in fact, they started a project pretty early on -this is sort of the mid to late 1940’s- called A History of Humanity trying to write a global history of humans.

Matthew Thomas  4:52
Sounds like it’s impossible.

Will Brehm  4:53
It is in many ways. And it quickly was contested, and people started to disagree with the very notion that you could sort of write one general history. And particularly in this sort of postcolonial period from the ’60s and ’70s onward, there was real pushback against this notion that there’s some global history that’s being written, of course, sort of in the West and with Western methodologies. And so, what ended up happening, in 1964, a movement towards regional history within UNESCO started. And they started with the focus of what was called the General History of Africa in 1964. And what UNESCO did at this point was bring together historians across Africa to try and construct a general shared histories of Africa. And it was very academic. It was academic history, primary sources, they spent about 50 years putting this project together. It ended up being eight different volumes that they published. Very rich in academic, sort of historical traditions. And it was only in 2009, that UNESCO said, okay, it’s great we have these really valuable history textbooks. And there’s lots of debates about how they sort of privileged certain countries over others within the African continent. But in 2009, UNESCO started thinking or maybe a little bit before. But in 2009, a new project started that was trying to take these eight volumes and put them into schools. Because you couldn’t just take these really dense history texts and just drop them into school curricula. So, they created a project to actually design curricula and lessons and units that are based on this General History of Africa project. UNESCO Bangkok, at the same time, was thinking, well, we don’t want to wait 50 years before we start impacting education and school curriculum. So, they actually decided to start directly with the school curricula and sort of forego bringing together all of these historians, which, of course, would create debate. It’s sort of what the academic community does. And so, UNESCO tried to not wait that long and sort of turbocharge the project directly into schools.

Matthew Thomas  7:02
It’s so interesting. I mean, as you specifically use the word histories plural earlier. It’s interesting to think about the notion of shared histories, whether we’re talking about the ASEAN region or Africa, and this tension with this idea of global summitry, which is something that you also talk about in the book as well. Can you just elaborate a little bit on that particular tension between a global summitry where decisions are being made that are seemingly universal on one hand, and on the other hand, histories that are plural. How did that look like? What are those tensions to draw out there?

Will Brehm  7:30
Yeah. It’s a really great question. So, global summitry is really the focus on these regional and global level meetings and events that take place quite regularly that bring together member states. And in many ways is a way of building consensus, sharing ideas in the hopes that these member states will then go and implement some of these ideas in their home countries. You know, sovereignty is still defined at the national level or the nation state level. So, global summitry is a way for these regional and global actors and institutions to sort of influence the national polity and policy. What’s interesting with this UNESCO Shared Histories Project is, UNESCO held countless meetings with different members of the 11 nation states within ASEAN. Brought them together, worked on this shared history curricula, they brought in international curriculum experts, they brought in historical experts, and they sort of went through a multi-year process of building and designing shared histories. But a lot of the shared histories is built on tensions. Some of the tension between present-day Thailand and present-day Cambodia. Historically, there were big tensions in terms of the different kingdoms that existed in the Southeast Asian region. And so, UNESCO was trying very hard to focus on the similarities and sort of forego and push to the side the differences. But of course, there was a bit of competition going on among the different member states trying to jockey for their particular version of national memory and the myths that sort of justifies the current elites in the different governments. So, for instance, Cambodia was very keen on getting Angkor Wat and the architecture of particular Buddhist pagodas that can be found in more parts of the region as well, not just Cambodia. And they were talking about how that should be included in the shared histories. But the power dynamics within these UNESCO Bangkok meetings were such that the Cambodians were a bit more marginalized than say the Indonesian delegations had particular historical experts hired by UNESCO Bangkok to design this curriculum. And so Angkor Wat and a lot of the architecture was sort of excluded from the final product, much to the Cambodian delegation being quite upset. So, it was interesting tensions that sort of emerged within that process of global summitry.

Matthew Thomas  9:48
So, maybe building on those ideas, what does a regional identity look like? Is it possible to have shared histories across this very diverse region and groups of people, cultures, and histories?

Will Brehm  9:59
I mean, Yes. Of course, it is. And there are shared histories. This is a group of nation states that is quite new. And so historically, it was mostly kingdoms. And these kingdoms changed in geographic shapes and sizes over time. There was lots of migration historically. So, yes, there is quite a lot of shared histories. How it intersects with the nation state and national history, that’s sort of the tension we were primarily interested in. But this notion of what is a regional identity is, I think, for us it’s not simply a geographic sort of notions. It’s not static. It’s not simply based on the institutions that might exist like ASEAN. It’s more socially constructed. It’s a process. It’s regionalization, or regionalism. It’s this idea that you actually have to socially construct the idea of a region that has to then be shared by the elites and regular people across this area. And not necessarily defined by external agents like ASEAN, sort of traditionally was in that Cold War period by Western bloc, the US bloc power, in this Cold War moment, using ASEAN to further its own interests across the globe. So, yes. That’s the history of ASEAN, sure. But I don’t think ASEAN necessarily defines what a regional identity is in the country or in the region. And so, in other words, regional identity in Southeast Asia is sort of a process of becoming. And the process of socialization that’s taking place is ongoing and has looked differently in different times. And so, we’re just very interested in this moment where a regional institution is trying to develop curriculum materials that will somehow shape identity patterns across the region. It’s quite a fascinating moment when it comes to regional identity making in this particular part of the world. Now, is it going to be successful? I don’t know. Are there a lot of tensions? Of course. It’s just an interesting way to document this process of how the idea of a region is even being constructed.

Matthew Thomas  11:55
You know, I grew up in the United States. And so, if I’m really honest, I don’t think of myself as having a region. And of course, the US would be part of North America and part of a number of other international agreements. But I think maybe that’s my own cultural myopia in terms of thinking about a region. And yet I know in some other regions, there’s a much stronger affinity to a sense of regionalism. And I think that’s really interesting just to think about the newness of some of the nation states that you were talking about, and certainly the complexity of the histories and cultures that are merged together. You mentioned briefly some of the various stakeholders who were involved in these particular meetings. People who were hired to be curriculum designers, there were delegates from all of these countries. Were there other stakeholders, as well, in addition to these people who were attending the global summits?

Will Brehm  12:39
You know, it was country delegations. And so, each country could decide how they put together that delegation. So, Cambodia was interesting, because they were sort of in parallel going through a process of curricular revision. And so, it sort of was a nice synergy for exploring how these shared histories curriculum would be implemented in Cambodia. And so, I did follow the Cambodian delegation quite closely. And the Cambodian delegation was history professors in the country, it was ministry officials in the country, there were secondary school teachers who taught history that would go to these meetings. And they would attend all of these different meetings. And then they would also be the group that came back to the country and was tasked by the Ministry of Education to redesign the history curriculum. But of course, there were the UNESCO Bangkok staff members who were there, the consultants that they hired, one of them actually wrote for the book -Rose Metro was hired by UNESCO Bangkok. She’s an expert in Burmese history but also is an expert in curriculum, teaching. And so, she’s written a lot of history textbooks that can be used for teachers, how to teach history. So, she was sort of an ideal candidate to bring in. And she ended up co-writing a chapter with me in this book, and she reflects on the process of her time running, a Mandala Kingdom was an exercise that they created. And they made all of these government officials and nation state delegations act out a Mandala Kingdom where there was a scenario in each different delegation, each person had a different role. Some had more powers than others, and then they had to sort of negotiate these bags of rice and sort of loyalty in different power. And it’s supposed to reflect the history of Southeast Asia, or at least a particular history of Southeast Asia. And that was her idea, or curricular activity that she created and then implemented and practiced. And now was that then implemented in different nation states? We don’t know. Then there was South Korea funded the project but to my understanding they weren’t necessarily too involved at the time. At the time, the director general of UNESCO Bangkok was from South Korea. And so, I think there was probably a close connection there.

Matthew Thomas  14:45
Well, you know, I’m always obsessed in terms of thinking about pedagogy. And I think that was one of the issues that came up in Rose’s chapter as well. Concerns about whether teachers in these various countries would use the same type of pedagogical approaches in a very active, applied learning that was a simulation, in this case, of the Mandala Kingdom. Can you say more about the role of pedagogy and whether that was a concern in terms of these kind of, let’s say, external creation of lesson plans and units to be taught?

Will Brehm  15:13
I mean, at the regional level, yes, they talked about it. And I think that story of Rose sort of designing this particular activity, and then getting all these different sorts of high-level delegations to act out. And in fact, it sort of worked. I mean, there was some members of the delegation running far away in the physical room to sort of distance themselves from the kings that existed more in the center who were able to extract tribute a bit easier. And that is probably what happened. I mean, James Scott wrote a whole book about The Art of Not Being Governed. And you know, the way you’re not governed is actually by giving distance to the center powers. And so, in a way, it was a really great activity. Now, is this actually going to be implemented back in some of these countries? And that’s an interesting question because I think for UNESCO Bangkok, the idea here was that these types of activities are to create a historical mindset. Being critical when you think about history. And it’s not only these sorts of activities, which sort of bring history to life, so to speak. But it’s also changing the way in which you teach history from thinking about more chronologically, which is traditionally how history is taught, to thinking about it more thematically. So, the four units that UNESCO came up with are themed. And then within each theme, it sort of cuts across history. It looks at contemporary issues, looks at prehistory, etc. So, that’s what UNESCO was thinking about pedagogically. Now, there are some tensions, when you think about it, trying to be implemented back into national states. The idea of creating a historical mindset in students to allow them to be critical can actually cause some states problems. So, in Cambodia, if you get students to think a bit more critically and engage in some topics that the current government does not want discussed, and all of a sudden, you’re sort of embracing students to sort of think critically about those topics, the government itself in Cambodia might think twice about embracing those sorts of pedagogies that are trying to live up to that intention of a historical mindset that’s critical. And so, I think there’s these tensions. And in Cambodia, it played out very clearly.

You know, one example is there was a program called The K5 Program, where it conscripted citizens more or less into the military to clear forest in the 1980’s so the Vietnamese army, which was supporting the Cambodian army, could move north and attack the Khmer Rouge, which was still in existence at that time, even though not in power. And the K5 plan ended up killing a lot of Cambodians because of the landmines that were spread out in the jungle as they were clear cutting it. But also with malaria, and starvation, overwork, it was just this pretty awful moment for everyday Cambodians. And a lot of people remember this in Cambodia, sort of, at the public level. But it’s a topic that cannot be discussed in the national curriculum. And that’s because the government in power at that time is still the government in power today. And in many ways, they have escaped blame for the mass tragedy of the K5 and would rather focus on how terrible the Khmer Rouge was. Which it was, but they want to sort of gloss over this other moment in the 1980’s. And so, the Cambodian government is very clear that they don’t want the K5 taught, and the curriculum designers were also very careful not to sort of wade into that controversy. And so, they had to be very cautious with what they included or excluded inside the curriculum in the end. Which then might go against creating such a historical mindset that UNESCO wanted to create to begin with.

Matthew Thomas  18:52
So, there is the potential for counter productivity in terms of UNESCO’s goals vis-a-vis the national curriculum that actually gets implemented, perhaps drawing on some of those lessons that were actually part of the Shared Histories Project. And I imagine for those curriculum developers and the designers, I mean, they’re caught in the tension as well, potentially, of the conversations that are being had at these curriculum design sessions at the global summits on one hand, and of course on the other, trying to reconcile their own national curriculum.

Will Brehm  19:20
And I think that’s exactly right. I mean, I think these, what I call mid-level bureaucrats, I think they’re essential to understand. They’re doing the translation basically between all of this global summitry and the national elite sort of discourse that the Prime Minister in Cambodia’s case really wants to emphasize. And these mid-level bureaucrats sitting on this committee, designing these new curriculum standards and textbooks, they’re the ones that are trying to balance. And I use James Scott’s notion of “cautious resistance and calculated conformity” to sort of make sense of that balance. Because many of these curricular developers that I met in Cambodia, these mid-level bureaucrats who worked for the Ministry of Education, they really were quite critical of some of the historical analysis in Cambodia. They wanted to talk about the K5. There was another sort of story about the color revolution. That the Cambodian government really wanted to emphasize this narrative of the “color revolution” being that there are sort of external actors working in Cambodia to overthrow the government, and they’re often working for the opposition party. And it just so happens that Kem Sokha, who’s the opposition leader who was jailed for treason more or less. The incident that the government usually points to is his time in Australia giving a talk. And that’s on YouTube and it’s really sort of surreal. But this notion of color revolution was really important to the high levels of government. And so, the mid-level bureaucrats had a lot of pressure to conform to that, to include notions of the color revolution. And so, the way they balanced this, the mid-level bureaucrats was, they did include the color revolution, but it was all about color revolutions in other countries, not Cambodia. So, they could point -the prime minister of Cambodia said, Is the color revolution in the new curriculum? The mid-level bureaucrats can say, yes, it is. But the sort of resistance is that it’s not the exact color revolution that maybe the Prime Minister wants included. So, it’s a really fascinating balance. And I think we should probably spend more time looking at these people in the middle trying to balance all of these elite opinions. And also, public opinion and public memories that do exist that, of course, these curriculum designers also experience and have in their mind, and they’re trying to balance all of these different competing interests inside the curriculum, which makes it such a fascinating thing to study.

Matthew Thomas  21:50
So fascinating. And I know our time is somewhat limited today. But I mean, to be honest, I could keep going on for another hour and a half just because I have so many questions and so many things I want to ask. But you publicly posted on Twitter that I’m going to ask you some tough questions. So, I’m going to ask you the toughest that I have on my list here. And that is that having now completed this project, how do you see the relationship between history and identity? Regionally, nationally, or otherwise?

Will Brehm  22:11
I think it’s hugely important. I think identity is so multifaceted. People wear multiple hats. Sometimes it’s contradictory and it changes. And I think history or historiography, the way we study history, that is often used to justify whatever identity it is. And so, I think how we study the histories of Southeast Asia are changing. And I think this UNESCO project is one example of a particular way of understanding the history of Southeast Asia for particular interests, or particular vision of the future. Will it happen exactly as UNESCO hopes? Probably not. It gets reinterpreted inside these nations. But I guess, if I think about things that are hopeful, we worked in Laos, and we wanted to understand identity patterns in Laos, which is a really great place to do so because it is such a diverse country. There are so many different ethnic groups across Laos. And when we went to two different provinces and surveyed students and teachers and principals, what we ended up finding is that sort of as expected, most people identify as a community, as an imagined community, very locally. You know, people in my village, people in my sort of commune. I might not know everyone in those areas but I can identify with those people. And I, very much so, identify with those people. After that, after you get outside of the village, the identity sort of perceptions of how close one feels with others in Laos, it’s the same. People feel as close to everyone else in Laos as they do with everyone else in Southeast Asia. And I think that’s quite fascinating because that would actually suggest that some sort of regional identity at the very local level, and at the everyday level, is possible in a way. And it’s very different than just unity and diversity as the ASEAN organization often says. To me, it’s sort of like the nation states are so young, particularly in the Mekong, that actually might allow for the combination of national and regional identity to sort of coexist. Yeah. I think it is possible. And of course, it would rely on history and memory and identity. So, it’s in process, I would say. So, it’s to be determined, which means there’s a lot more research that needs to be done across the region. And this book we worked on was only in the Mekong. Of course, there’s the island nations of Southeast Asia, which introduced a whole new level of complexity that needs to be thought through.

Matthew Thomas  24:27
Complexity in terms of the sense of identity and regionally nationally as well. But even in terms of the internal dynamics of creating the curriculum. Is that right?

Will Brehm  24:36
I would imagine. I don’t know as much about the island nations but certainly there’s going to be domestic sort of particularities but there will also be different histories of colonialism. In a place like Indonesia, where there’s hundreds of languages spoken, there’s hundreds of islands. Each of these places are going to be quite unique in how they intersect, and work together is quite a fascinating national story. But how do you then connect it to all the other nation states in the country and sort of get to some larger phenomenon that is regional in a sense. And that’s to be determined, I think?

Matthew Thomas  25:09
Will, you’ve talked a little bit about this but I’m just wondering if there are any lessons that can be drawn from this exercise by UNESCO or even perhaps your research, And curriculum can always be controversial. I’m thinking about some of the debates that have been happening in the United States or where I’m located right now in Australia. There was a new curriculum that just came out here in Australia and a lot of questions about what was included or excluded from that curriculum. Do you have a sense for what we can glean or learn from this exercise?

Will Brehm  25:36
I would say, UNESCO Bangkok went to great lengths to consider this project cultural and not political. When we asked the different members of UNESCO Bangkok if this was a political project, they would say, “No, of course not. This is not a political project. This is very much a cultural project. It’s about bringing people together, working together, and then letting the politics play out at the national level”. And I think that’s probably incorrect. I think it is a political project among elites at the regional level that is taking place. And I would suggest embracing that politics. There is ideology there. Embracing the ideology, being quite explicit with it. And to me, that will be just a more honest approach to the project itself rather than trying to minimize this notion of politics and sort of emphasize some of the notions of culture -we know, a very loose term. I mean, to me, that’s the main lesson from this project. You know, a lot of people ask me, “Is this project a success or a failure”? And I don’t know if we can easily sort of categorize it either/or. I think it’s part of this process of regionalization within this part of the world. And this project probably, as project cycles go within these big international organizations, they’re probably going to be done with it. There will be these lessons that are publicly available in multiple languages online. And maybe different countries will adopt some of the content in there, which will then have some sort of impact. So, in a sense, it is successful but it might not be successful in the terms that UNESCO set out to begin with.

Matthew Thomas  27:10
And as you suggest, a dynamic space, right? It will be shifting in the next couple of years. You gave the example of the curriculum from Africa earlier. My colleague, Alex McCormick at Sydney has done a lot of regional work in the Pacific. You know, we think about the European Union and different changes vis-a-vis populism and nationalism. So, certainly, there’s no shortage of things to research or to work on in this space. Do you have a sense for what’s next? Are you planning to conduct a follow up study or anything else related to this?

Will Brehm  27:35
I would love to. I mean, to me, one of the things that’s so fascinating are the groups on the margins across Southeast Asia or the ethnic minorities. And I think this is very much influenced by James Scott’s notion of the art of not being governed. I highly recommend everyone read that book, if you’re interested in Southeast Asia. But I think it would be very interesting to try and understand some of these patterns at the extremes. You know, as far away from the nation state as you can. I mean, what we focused on was the heart of the nation state. We looked at national governments, national delegations working in institutions that bring together nation states. But we know the region is filled with people who live on the edges, who live in the shatter zone, as James Scott would call it. And I want to know what’s happening there across the region because there actually might be notions of shared identity and shared histories in those spaces that are on the complete margins of the nation state. And I think that would be a fascinating follow up study to this one. But of course, I also think there needs to be a lot more work looking at national curricula. Since schooling is such a state project, it would be really fascinating to understand what’s happening in more than just the Mekong countries across the island countries as well would be a really fascinating topic. So, if there’s any PhD students out there or future PhD students out there, there’s a lot of work to be done.

Matthew Thomas  28:56
Thank you Will, for joining FreshEd.

Will Brehm  28:58
Thank you so much, Matthew. It’s just such a pleasure.

Want to help translate this show? Please contact info@freshedpodcast.com

Guest Publications/Projects

Memory in the Mekong: Regional Identity, Schools, and Politics in Southeast Asia

The Unesco Shared Histories Curriculum
Cambodia for Sale: Everyday Privatization in Cambodia and Beyond

Curricular challenges to human rights in the Mekong: Disputed histories, contested identities

Mentioned Resources
Understanding Shared Histories: A Teaching Package for Southeast Asia

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
A History of Humanity 

General History of Africa
Angkor Wat: An Introduction 

The Art of Not Being Governed – James Scott
The K5 Gamble
Cambodia in 2020: Preventing a Color Revolution 

Recommended

Explaining ASEAN: Regionalism in Southeast Asia

Towards Community Formation in Southeast Asia: History Education, ASEAN and the Nation State

Culture, Values, and Regional Integration in Asia

The evolution and Limitation of ASEAN Identity
The ASEAN Way as a Symbol: An Analysis of Discourses on the ASEAN Norms
Public Feelings Toward ASEAN: One Vision, One Identity, One Community?
Why Collective Identity Matters: Constructivism and the Absence of ASEAN’s Role in the Rohingya Crisis
Building ASEA Identity Through Regional Diplomacy
ASEAN’s One Identity and One Community: A Slogan or a Reality
Conjectures on “ASEAN Citizenship” 1967-2017: Identities, Ideas, Institutions
ASEAN Identities: Regional Aspirations and National Realities

Performing a Pan-ASEAN Archipelagic Identity at Age 50

Have any useful resources related to this show? Please send them to info@freshedpodcast.com