The Role of the Social Sciences in COVID-19 Responses in Southeast Asia: An Introduction

This Special Focus aims to conceptualize social science practices as characterized by Burawoy (2005), distinguishing social sciences from the natural sciences as well as the humanities in the use of both instrumental and reflexive knowledge. The production and use of knowledge to achieve a goal (i.e., instrumental) and to provide various forms of powerful knowledge for the public (i.e., reflexive) may pose a variety of opportunities for policy interventions. We apply Burawoy’s approach to the context of the pandemic in selected countries of Southeast Asia.

The articles presented here have been further developed and deepened from an eleven-country study titled “Social Science and COVID-19: A Southeast Asia Response”, conducted by the Global Development Network (GDN) and the Asia Research Centre at Universitas Indonesia (ARC UI), together with teams of social scientists from the respective Southeast Asia countries (Fussy, Obino and Rakhmani, 2022). Engaging in this research project is, in itself, a kind of social knowledge intervention for the authors involved—in ways that Burawoy might categorize as public social sciences. While GDN’s and ARC UI’s research focused on the main hindrances and enabling factors in the use of the social sciences in COVID-19 policy responses, this Special Focus investigates more deeply the relationship between social scientists and state power in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.

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