Taking Southeast Asia To Market

Recent changes in the global economy and in Southeast Asian national political economies have led to new forms of commodity production and new commodities. Using insights from political economy and commodity studies, the essays in Taking Southeast Asia to Market trace the myriad ways recent alignments among producers, distributors, and consumers are affecting people and nature throughout the region. In case studies ranging from coffee and hardwood products to mushroom pickers and Vietnamese factory workers, the authors detail the Southeast Asian articulations of these processes while also discussing the broader implications of these shifts. Taken together, the cases show how commodities illuminate the convergence of changing social forces in Southeast Asia today, as they transform the terms, practices, and experiences of everyday life and politics in the global economy.

"Asia-Pacific economic development is at a decisive point. The particular system of open trading is breaking down, and no longer has clearcut American support. East Asia can now provide a majority of the market's growth required for its own export expansion, but cannot carry the whole load alone. APEC is the appropriate forum for maintaining the international framework that is necessary for East Asian dynamism to continue. This book looks at the changing international environment and its challenges for the Asian market economies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Professor Yoshihara, an international expert on the Southeast Asian economies, looks beyond the causes of the current crisis to discuss what can be done to build a dynamic economy in Asia to ensure prosperity for the future. He takes the viewpoint that the only way to achieve this is to promote integration into the global economy through free trade and free capital movement. He puts forward a convincing argument that government intervention is not the way forward and has in fact helped cause the present crisis. But a prosperous future is possible, he argues, by renovating institutions and adapting new attitudes. A most timely book with lessons for other parts of the world as well as for Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia has long fascinated development practitioners and researchers for being one of the few regions of the world that has resisted global trends to become a successful developing region. Divided into accessible thematic chapters, this book adopts a unique perspective of equitable development to outline the strengths and weaknesses of the transformations taking place in the Southeast Asian region. Focusing on four key themes: equality and inequality; political freedom and opportunity; empowerment and participation; and environmental sustainability, these concepts are used to explore Southeast Asian development and trace the impacts that the growing popularity of market-led and grassroots approaches are having upon economic, political and social processes. Whilst the diversity of the region is emphasized so are some of the homogenizing trends such as the concentration of wealth and services in urban areas and the subsequent migration of rural people into urban factories and squatter settlements. The ongoing commercialization and industrialization of rural agriculture as well as the expansion of non-farm income earning opportunities in rural spaces, and the alarming rates of environmental degradation which threaten health and livelihoods are also exposed. In highlighting how Southeast Asian development is unevenly distributing wealth, opportunities and risks throughout the region, this book emphasizes the need for creative new approaches to ensure that benefits of development are equitably enjoyed by all. Including illustrations, case studies and further reading, this book provides an accessible up-to-date introductory text for students and researchers interested in Southeast Asian development, development studies, Asian studies and geography.

The rapid postwar economic growth in the Southeast Asia region has led to a transformation of many of the societies there, together with the development of new types of anthropological research in the region. Local societies with originally quite different cultures have been incorporated into multi-ethnic states with their own projects of nation-building based on the creation of "national cultures" using these indigenous elements. At the same time, the expansion of international capitalism has led to increasing flows of money, people, languages and cultures across national boundaries, resulting in new hybrid social structures and cultural forms. This book examines the nature of these processes in contemporary Southeast Asia with detailed case studies drawn from countries across the region, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. At the macro-level these include studies of nation-building and the incorporation of minorities. At the micro-level they range from studies of popular cultural forms, such as music and textiles to the impact of new sects and the world religions on local religious practice. Moving between the global and the local are the various streams of migrants within the region, including labor migrants responding to the changing distribution of economic opportunities and ethnic minorities moving in response to natural disaster.

This new edition updates its precedessor and uses the Asian economic crisis to indicate how theoretical differences identified in the South-East Asian boom were brought into even sharper relief in the analysis of the crisis and recovery strategies.

This book examines contemporary forms of rural resistance to agrarian reforms in Southeast Asia, adopting a multi-scalar approach. focusing on Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.