1st Edition

The Modern Anthropology of South-East Asia An Introduction

By Victor King, William D. Wilder Copyright 2002
    448 Pages
    by Routledge

    448 Pages
    by Routledge

    This is a comprehensive introduction to the social and cultural anthropology of South-East Asia. It provides an overview of the major theoretical issues and themes which have emerged from the engagement of anthropologists with South-East Asian communities; a succinct historical survey and analysis of the peoples and cultures of the region. Most importantly the volume reveals the vitally important role which the study of the area has occupied in the development of the concepts and methods of anthropology: from the perspectives of Edmund Leach to Clifford Geertz, Maurice Freedman to Claude Levi-Strauss; Lauriston Sharp to Melford Spiro.

    1. Southeast Asia: A Field of Anthropological Enquiry?  2. Anthropology and the Colonial Impact (1900-1950)  3. Anthropology in the Period of Decolonization (1950-1970): The American Tradition  4. Anthropology in the Period of Decolonization (1950-1970): The European Tradition  5. Social and Economic Change: 'Peasants' as Part-Societies  6. Ethnicity, Identity and Nationalism  7. Ecology and Environmental Change  8. Gender and the Sexes  9. Urban Ways of Life  10. Summary, Conclusions and Trends

    Biography

    Victor King is Professor of South-East Asian Studies at the University of Hull, and author of The Peoples of Borneo (1993) and Anthropology and Development in South-East Asia: Theory and Practice (1999). William Wilder is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Durham, and author of Communication, Social Structure and Development in Rural Malaysia (1982).