One of the main problems faced by teachers and students who have a scholarly interest in Southeast Asia is the lack of general, user-friendly texts in the social sciences. The absence of an introduction to the sociology of Southeast Asia is especially unfortunate. This volume attempts to meet these needs. This is, then, the first sole-authored introductory sociology text on Southeast Asia that focuses on change and development in the region, provides an overview of the important sociological and political economy writings, and considers the key concepts and themes in the field since 1945. Some multiauthored works do exist but these either are outdated or focus on specialized topics. Aimed primarily at undergraduates up to the final year, it will also be a useful reference work for post-graduates and researchers who lack such a general work.

"This book shows how, through the application of the methods of cultural studies, fresh readings of Southeast Asian societies can be undertaken, readings that not only reveal fresh facets of the complexity and fascination of the region, but also place it back at the centre of current theoretical debates in the social sciences and Asian studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"Abstract: Ninety percent of the world's youth live in Africa, Latin America and the developing countries of Asia. Despite this, the field of Youth Studies, like many others, is dominated by the knowledge economy of the Global North. To address these geo-political inequalities of knowledge, The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies offers a contribution from Southern scholars to remake Youth Studies from its current state, that universalizes Northern perspectives, into a truly Global Youth Studies. Contributors from across various regions of the Global South, including from the Diaspora, Indigenous and Aboriginal communities, locate and define 'the Global South,' articulate the necessity of studying Southern lives to enrich, re-interpret, legitimate and offer symmetry to Youth Studies, and utilizes and innovates Southern theory to do so. Eleven concepts - personhood, intersectionality, violences, de- and post-coloniality, consciousness, precarity, fluid modernities, ontological insecurity, navigational capacities, collective agency and emancipation - are re-imagined and re-presented. The outcome is a series of everyday practices such as hustling, navigating, fixing, waiting, being on standby, silence, life-writing, that demonstrate how youth living in adversity experiment with and push back against routine and conformity, and how research may support them in these endeavors and, simultaneously, redefine the relationships between knowledge, practice and politics - what the editors term 'epistepraxis'. The handbook concludes with a nascent charter for a Global Youth Studies of benefit to the world, which no longer excludes, assumes, or elides but rather includes new possibilities for representing youth, researching amongst them, and devising policies and interventions to better serve them. Keywords: Global South, youth studies, practice, communities of practice, knowledge, theory, justice, solidarity, epistepraxis"--

Economic behavior is governed by two major sets of boundary conditions: environmental and technological factors on the one hand, and conditions of social organization on the other hand. Indeed, social scientists are often particularly interested in the framework of exchange relationships: exchange of goods, services, personnel, and information. Economic exchanges lend concrete manifestations to social relations that themselves may transcend the economic realm and that otherwise are often difficult to trace. Yet in social science research in Southeast Asia, the area of economic studies has lagged behind, despite the great study potential represented by the tremendous diversity of its physical and human environment. Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in Southeast Asia attempts to take advantage of that opportunity. As a number of the contributions to this volume show, many if not most of the systems organized on very different levels of integration interact with each other. Taken as a whole, they provide evidence of the incredible diversity of economic and social systems that may be investigated in Southeast Asia.

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 book brings together material on headhunting from several Southeast Asia societies, examines its cultural contexts, and relates them to colonial history, violence, and ritual.

Written by a multinational team of experts who deploy their disciplinary strengths in history, sociology, social anthropology, political science, and philology to analyze a wide range of sources, including royal chronicles, missionary dictionaries, colonial archival documents, audio- and videotapes, and face-to-face interviews, Armies and Societies in Southeast Asia adds to the small but growing body of publications on warfare in Southeast Asia and colonial armies. Military-society relations are examined in a wide range of ways: traditional strategies of augmenting populations, mutinies, and mutiny attempts, imperial anxieties, Japanese military legacies, the transoceanic experiences of Southeast Asian and European soldiers, postwar demobilizations and postconflict biographies, and the transformation of communist guerrillas into guardians of the state and their development of capitalist enterprises. This volume will be of interest to Southeast Asianists and military historians alike as it not only covers traditional territorial grounds, thematic terrains, and temporal landscapes but also extends to individuals and further includes the national, regional, and transnational lives of military institutions.