by Ross King
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2008

Arguably Southeast Asia’s most spectacular city, Kuala Lumpur—widely known as KL—has just celebrated fifty years as the national capital of Malaysia. But KL now has a very different twin in Putrajaya, the country’s new administrative capital. Where KL is a diverse, cosmopolitan, multiracial metropolis, Putrajaya fulfills an elitest vision of a Malay-Muslim utopia. KL’s multicultural richness is reflected in the brilliance and diversity of its architecture and urban spaces; Putrajaya, by contrast, is an architectural homage to an imagined Middle East.

The “purity” of Putrajaya throws the cosmopolitan diversity of Kuala Lumpur into sharp relief, and the tension between the two places reflects the rifts that run through Malaysian society. In this copiously illustrated book, Ross King considers what form of metropolis the Kuala Lumpur-Putrajaya region might foreshadow, arguing that signs of this future city are to be sought in the collision points between the utopian dreams of imagined futures and the reality of purposely forgotten pasts.

Drawing on postcolonial studies, media studies, and critical social theory, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya makes a significant contribution to architecture, urban planning, urban design, and Malaysian politics and society.

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edited by Bernice Chauly and Sharon Bakar
Word Works, 2011

Bernice Chauly and Sharon Bakar select the best poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction submitted by Malaysian, Singaporean and expatriate writers who have read their work at their live literary event, Readings, and demonstrate the sheer variety and range of voices that characterize the local writing scene. You will find works from both established poets and authors, and from promising new writers making their debut. If ever evidence were needed that the local writing community is thriving — this is it.

Readings from Readings celebrates Kuala Lumpur’s longest-running live literature event. Founded in 2005 by Bernice Chauly, Readings provides a regular place in which local writers and readers can connect in an informal atmosphere.

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by Christine B.N. Chin
Oxford University Press, 2013

Cosmopolitan Sex Workers is a groundbreaking look into the phenomenon of non-trafficked women who migrate from one global city to another to perform paid sexual labor in Southeast Asia. Through a new, innovative framework, Christine B.N. Chin shows that as neoliberal economic restructuring processes create pathways connecting major cities throughout the world, competition and collaboration between cities creates new avenues for the movement of people, services and goods. Loosely organized networks of migrant labor grow in tandem with professional-managerial classes, and sex workers migrate to different parts of cities, depending on the location of the clientele to which they cater.

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edited by Amir Muhammad
Buku Fixi, 2013

KL NOIR: Red is the first of 4 volumes about the Malaysian capital city’s dark side. There are 14 short stories and one essay about the seedy, the sinister and sometimes the spooky. You will find murder, drug-dealing, kidnapping, sexual depravity, prostitution, celebrity secrets, suicides, academic rivalry, gangsters, police brutality, cannibalism, black magic, creepy rituals, political corruption and even busking. It’s all totally fictional. Well, maybe the cannibalism is.

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by Yat Ming Loo
Ashgate, 2013

Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, is a former colony of the British Empire which today prides itself in being a multicultural society par excellence. Engaging with complex colonial and postcolonial aspects of the city from the British colonial era in the 1880s to the modernisation period in the 1990s, this book demonstrates how Kuala Lumpur’s urban landscape is overwritten by a racial agenda through the promotion of Malaysian Architecture, including the world-famous mega-projects of Petronas Twin Towers and the new administrative capital of Putrajaya. It demonstrates how the ‘Malayanisation’ and ‘Islamisation’ of the urban landscape – the core of Malaysia’s decolonisation projects – has marginalised the Chinese urban spaces which were once at the heart of Kuala Lumpur. Drawing on a wide range of Chinese community archives, interviews and resources, the book illustrates how Kuala Lumpur’s Chinese spaces have been subjugated. This includes original case studies showing how the Chinese re-appropriated the Kuala Lumpur old city centre of Chinatown and Chinese cemeteries as a way of contesting state’s hegemonic national identity and ideology.This book is arguably the first academic book to examine the relationship of Malaysia’s large Chinese minority with the politics of architecture and urbanism in Kuala Lumpur. It is also one of the few academic books to situate the Chinese diaspora spaces at the centre of the construction of city and nation. By including the spatial contestation of those from the margins and their resistance against the hegemonic state ideology, this book proposes a recuperative urban and architectural history, seeking to revalidate the marginalised spaces of minority community (Chinese spaces in Kuala Lumpur), and re-script them into the narrative of the postcolonial nation-state.

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by Johan Fischer
Nias-Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2008

The West has seen the rise of the organic movement. In the Muslim world, a similar halal movement is rapidly spreading. Exploring consumption practices in urban Malaysia, this book shows how diverse forms of Malay middle-class consumption (of food, clothing and cars, for example) are understood, practised and contested as a particular mode of modern Islamic practice. It illustrates ways in which the issue of ‘proper Islamic consumption’ for consumers, the marketplace and the state in contemporary Malaysia evokes a whole range of contradictory Islamic visions, lifestyles and debates articulating what Islam is or ought to be. Its rich empirical material on everyday consumption in a local context will reinvigorate theoretical discussions about the nature of religion, ritual, the sacred and capitalism in the new millennium.

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by Johan Fischer
Big Table Publishing Company, 2012

Halal: Arabic,literally “permissible” or “lawful.” Johan Fischer’s illuminating studyproves that in the modern world, halal is no longer an expression of esoteric forms of production, trade, and consumption, but part of a huge and expanding globalized market. Exploring contemporary forms of halal understanding and practice among Malay Muslims in London – that is, halal consumption by middle-class Malays on “the frontier” – evokes important and pressing questions on both Islamic thought and how we live our lives today. The Halal Frontier gives us fresh insight into the religious dimensions of food consumption in an era of globalized mass production.

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by Abdullahi Ayan
CreateSpace, 2013

This book presents a wealth of information and ideas on Halal trade and commerce that cannot be found anywhere else. It answers many of the questions that business enterprises may have about accessing the global halal market and addresses the challenges they may expect. These questions include the following: 1. What is halal and how can it be utilised to gain maximum access to the global halal market? 2. What is a halal standard and how can it be applied to the production, processing and sale of halal goods and services. 3. What is halal certification and how can it be obtained? 4. Who are Halal consumers and how can they be identified and defined? 5. What kind of problems can business enterprises anticipate and how can they be overcome? 6. How can a new halal brand be created and how can an existing brand become halal compliant? Even though some of the examples are drawn from Australian experiences, the scope of the book, its ideas and their application are global. It offers a rare insight into how business can use halal as a platform to transform and expand their commercial activity in order to capture a much larger share of the global marketplace than they currently do. Mindful of the shortcoming of current halal practices, it also offers pathways to halal reform and development. Halal is fundamental to Islamic thought and practice. It gives insight into how Muslims see the world and act in it. Deeply rooted in Islamic law it can be part of the study of history, politics, sociology, culture and communication as well the study of economics and finance. However it is most manifest in its application as set of standards to the production, sale and rendering of goods and services in the marketplace which is the focus of this book.

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by Paul Temporal
Universal Publishers, 2011

Islamic Branding and Marketing: Creating A Global Islamic Business provides a complete guide to building brands in the largest consumer market in the world. The global Muslim market is now approximately 23 percent of the world’s population, and is projected to grow by about 35 percent in the next 20 years. If current trends continue, there are expected to be 2.2 billion Muslims in 2030 that will make up 26.4 percent of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion.
As companies currently compete for the markets of China and India, few have realized the global Muslim market represents potentially larger opportunities. Author Paul Temporal explains how to develop and manage brands and businesses for the fast-growing Muslim market through sophisticated strategies that will ensure sustainable value, and addresses issues such as:

How is the global Muslim market structured?

What opportunities are there in Islamic brand categories, including the digital world?
What strategies should non-Muslim companies adopt in Muslim countries?
More than 30 case studies illustrate practical applications of the topics covered, including Brunei Halal Brand, Godiva Chocolatier, Johor Corporations, Nestle, Unilever, Fulla, Muxlim Inc, and more.

Whether you are in control of an established company, starting up a new one, or have responsibility for a brand within an Islamic country looking for growth, Islamic Branding and Marketing is an indispensable resource that will help build, improve and secure brand equity and value for your company.

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by Mahmud bin Ahmad
Amazon Digital Services, 2012

Muslim countries are often thought of as culturally backward, authoritarian, misogynistic, and poor in economic performance. The teachings of Islam, however, prescribe democratic governance and free-market economics. While Muslims, as a whole, have tremendous economic potential, many Muslims are among the world’s poorest and least educated. Corrupt autocratic leaders have attempted to capitalize on the Muslim dream of building a grand society but owing to these manipulations and leaders’ insincerity, their efforts have yielded little fruitful results. This thesis discusses nation building by fusing Islam, pluralism, democracy, and modernity. It argues that Malaysia’s religious tolerance and adherence to western development models fostered economic growth since its independence. Clearly, practicing Islam, while pursuing social, economic, and political development, is a suitable model especially for heterogeneous societies. The thesis offers a model, Malaysia, as a unique example of the influence of Islamic universalism, multiculturalism, and Islamic modernism to improve economic growth. The thesis depicts the evolutionary transformation of Malay-Islam from its settlement to its status as a model for Muslims and the Third World countries. This thesis illustrates the compatibility of Islam and modernity in economic development.

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by Tan Twan Eng
Weinstein Books, 2012

Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself.

As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

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by Tan Twan Eng
Weinstein Books, 2009

The recipient of extraordinary acclaim from critics and the bookselling community, Tan Twan Eng’s debut novel casts a powerful spell and has garnered comparisons to celebrated wartime storytellers Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. Set during the tumult of World War II, on the lush Malayan island of Penang, The Gift of Rain tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits.

In 1939, sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton-the half-Chinese, half-English youngest child of the head of one of Penang’s great trading families-feels alienated from both the Chinese and British communities. He at last discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island, and in return Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. When the Japanese savagely invade Malaya, Philip realizes that his mentor and sensei-to whom he owes absolute loyalty-is a Japanese spy. Young Philip has been an unwitting traitor, and must now work in secret to save as many lives as possible, even as his own family is brought to its knees.

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by Tash Aw
HarperPerennial, 2006

The Harmony Silk Factory is the textiles store run by Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in rural Malay in the first half of the twentieth century. It is the most impressive and truly amazing structure in the region, and to the inhabitants of the Kinta Valley Johnny Lim is a hero—a Communist who fought the Japanese when they invaded, ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his people. But to his son, Jasper, Johnny is a crook and a collaborator who betrayed the very people he pretended to serve, and the Harmony Silk Factory is merely a front for his father’s illegal businesses. Centering on Johnny from three perspectives—those of his grown son; his wife, Snow, the most beautiful woman in the Kinta Valley (through her diary entries); and his best and only friend, an Englishman adrift named Peter Wormwood—the novel reveals the difficulty of knowing another human being, and how our assumptions about others also determine who we are.

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by Chan Ling Yap
Pen Press, 2010

Set in the late 1930s and 1960s, this is the tale of Mei Yin, a young Chinese girl from an impoverished family. Her destiny is shaped when she is sent to Kuala Lumpar to become the ward and companion of the tyrannical and bitter Su Hei who is looking for a suitable wife for her son Ming Kong…and ultimately a grandson and heir to the family dynasty. “Sweet Offerings” is not just a fictional story of the events that ripped one family apart, but a taste of Malaysia’s historical political and cultural changes during its transition from colonial rule to independence and beyond.

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by Rani Manicka
Penguin, 2004

At the age of fourteen, Lakshmi leaves behind her childhood among the mango trees of Ceylon for married life across the ocean in Malaysia, and soon finds herself struggling to raise a family in a country that is, by turns, unyielding and amazing, brutal and beautiful. Giving birth to a child every year until she is nineteen, Lakshmi becomes a formidable matriarch, determined to secure a better life for her daughters and sons. From the Japanese occupation during World War II to the torture of watching some of her children succumb to life’s most terrible temptations, she rises to face every new challenge with almost mythic strength. Dreamy and lyrical, told in the alternating voices of the men and women of this amazing family, The Rice Mother gorgeously evokes a world where small pleasures offset unimaginable horrors, where ghosts and gods walk hand in hand. It marks the triumphant debut of a writer whose wisdom and soaring prose will touch readers, especially women, the world over.

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edited by Kennon Breazeale
Foundation for the Promotion of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1999

“This truly impressive volume has stood the test of time and relevance as scholars and others alike continue to discuss the transnational maritime connections across Asia. One of the major accomplishments of this volume, however, is that rather than place the focus of the narrative on the rise of the European trading companies in the region during the Early Modern period, readers are rather encouraged to refocus on the rise of Ayutthaya as “one of the most powerful polities in this part of the world.” (Preface) The volume bears relevance to scholars of Thailand and Southeast Asia alone as it neatly traces the development of the second major Thai state, or rather state-like polity (after Sukhothai), in the region during its four hundred and sixteen year long apogee from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, through an assertion of the evidence mounted in this volume it is possible to assert that Ayutthaya bears not only regional but also global significance as the well protected hinterland location of this up-river polity provided a comfortable location of exchange between the Oceanic networks stretching from the Mediterranean through the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the straights of Melaka outward to the Vietnamese Coast, the South China Sea and Eastern Asia.”

From a review by William Noseworthy

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by Michael Smithies
Silkworm Books, 2000

This long-forgotten tale of the shipwreck off the coast of Africa of a Siamese embassy to Lisbon in 1686 lay buried in the text of a French book printed 300 years ago. The author of the text was the intrepid and intriguing Jesuit Tachard, who published accounts of his first two journeys to Siam. In his second book, written when he was King Narai’s personal envoy to Louis XIV and Pope Innocent XI, Tachard relates the account of the shipwreck as told by one of its survivors, Ok-khun Chamnan Chaicong, who was accompanying Tachard on his return to France. Ok-khun Chamnan, during his odyssey as part of the aborted embassy to Portugal, spent nearly a year in Goa, where he learned Portuguese; a month traveling overland from Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa, to the Cape of Good Hope; four months at the Dutch settlement at the Cape; six months in Batavia; and several months at sea. On his return to Siam in 1687 he was ordered to greet the French envoys La Loubre and Szberet soon after their arrival. The adventures of this Siamese khunnang did not end with his unsuccessful journey to Lisbon. He went on to Europe in 1688, visited the Riviera and Rome in winter, met the pope, and then in 1689 had an audience with Louis XIV. He converted to Catholicism and returned from Europe in 1690, disembarking at Balassor in Bengal before returning to Ayutthaya overland from Mergui. This extraordinary account has been translated into English for the first time, and is accompanied by three contemporary texts by Choisy, Tachard, and La Loubre describing the Dutch settlement at the Cape.

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by Stefan Eklof
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2006

Southeast Asia contains some of the world’s busiest shipping waters, particularly the Indonesian archipelago, the Straits of Malacca and South China Sea. The natural geography and human ecology of maritime Southeast Asia makes the area particularly apt for piracy. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that these waters are also the world’s most pirate-infested, accounting for over a third of the total number of pirate attacks world-wide. The figures have increased in recent years, as transnationally organized crime syndicates have extended their activities in the area. Meanwhile, the capacity of the state authorities in the region to suppress piracy appears to have declined, fuelling suspicions that sections of the maritime authorities are colluding with some of the organized pirate gangs that they are supposed to be combating. Not surprisingly, piracy has a long history in the region, and in several instances during the last 250 years, pirates have disrupted peaceful trade and communications. This text traces the shifting character and development of Southeast Asian piracy from the 18th century to the present day, demonstrating how political, economic, social and technological factors have contributed to change – but have by no means exterminated – the phenomenon.

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by Kenneth R. Hall
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011

This comprehensive history provides a fresh interpretation of Southeast Asia from 100 to 1500, when major social and economic developments foundational to modern societies took place on the mainland (Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) and the island world (Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines). Kenneth Hall explores this dynamic era in detail, which was notable for growing external contacts, internal adaptations of nearby cultures, and progressions from hunter-gatherer and agricultural communities to inclusive hierarchical states. In the process, formerly local civilizations became major participants in period’s international trade networks.

Incorporating the latest archeological evidence and international scholarship, Kenneth Hall enlarges upon prior histories of early Southeast Asia that did not venture beyond 1400, extending the study of the region to the Portuguese seizure of Melaka in 1511. Written for a wide audience of non-specialists, the book will be essential reading for all those interested in Asian and world history.

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by Shirley Fish
AuthorHouseUK, 2011

During the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the transpacific treasure galleons sailed annually from Manila to Acapulco. In Manila, the vessel was loaded with the scented spices of the East, luxurious silks from China, exquisite hand crafted lacquerware from Japan and a multitude of Oriental goods that the Spaniards of New Spain longed to own. The returning galleon from Acapulco to Manila, carried as much as 2.5 million silver pesos in payment of the goods sent to the New Spain in the previous year, as well as a yearly silver subsidy of 250,000 reales for the maintenance of the colonial government in the Philippines. But while the galleons mainly sailed alone and unaccompanied from Manila to Acapulco and vice versa, they were vulnerable to a host of calamities and misfortunes. A fire on board the vessel or a terrifying storm could end the voyage and the lives of every one on the ship even before the galleon was able to reach land. Additionally, the commanders of the galleons were always threatened by lurking pirates and privateers who preyed on the vessels and coveted the treasures they carried. The book describes in detail how the galleons were attacked at sea and how they fought against enemy vessels, as well as how many of the ships sank or were shipwrecked over the years. It also covers their management, construction, manning, weaponry, navigation, daily life on the ship, provisions, cargoes and voyages. The book contains an annotated list of the galleons sailing between the Philippines and Mexico from 1565 to 1815. This informative book is the first of its kind to cover such an expansive history of the Pacific galleons which up to this point had remained largely untold.

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Edited by Watson and Ellen
University of Hawaii Press, 1993

Witchcraft holds a perennial fascination for scholars and the public at large. In Southeast Asia malign magic and sorcery are part of the routine experience of villagers and urban dwellers alike, and stories appearing in the press from time to time bear witness to a persisting public concern. The essays presented in this volume describe what people believe and what actions result from those beliefs. Not surprisingly, given the range and variety of cultures, considerable differences exist in the region. Among some cultures, in Thailand and Indonesia for example, sorcerers are said to possess spirits that empower them to cause illness and misfortune. Elsewhere, in Malaysia and Sumatra, the power of the dukun derives from the accumulation of arcane knowledge and mystical practice. Contributors describe the witches and sorcerers they have met and suggest both how their societies look upon them and how we in turn should regard them. Understanding Witchcraft and Sorcery in Southeast Asia will appeal to scholars and students of social anthropology and comparative religion. Its substantial contribution to theoretical and comparative issues in a Southeast Asian context provides a fresh perspective on a stimulating topic.

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by Alex G. Paman
Tuttle Publishing, 2011

Ghost stories are commonplace in traditional Filipino culture, with virtually every family having their own personal accounts of encounters with the supernatural. Passed on from generation to generation, these tales act as a bridge to the past, to a time lost or nearly forgotten.

Full of ghostly encounters with all manner of things eerie and terrifying in the Philippines, Filipino Ghost Stories is a collection of creepy tales that have been told in the author’s family for generations. The book delivers terrific entertainment—and some good chills—for those interested in the Philippines and aficionados of the supernatural alike.

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by Lansell Taudevin
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010

Malaysia is a country riddled with folklore of ghosts: hantu, pontianak, tigbanua, djinn and so on. There are hundreds. This books takes a light hearted look at some of the ghost stories that are popular in that country. read and believe – if you will!

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by Nigel Barley
Monsoon Books Pte. Ltd., 2010

Many men dream of running away to a tropical island and living surrounded by beauty and exotic exuberance. Walter Spies did more than dream. He actually did it. In the 1920s and 30s, Walter Spies – ethnographer, choreographer, film maker, natural historian and painter – transformed the perception of Bali from that of a remote island to become the site for Western fantasies about Paradise and it underwent an influx of foreign visitors. The rich and famous flocked to Spies’ house in Ubud and his life and work forged a link between serious academics and the visionaries from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, Miguel Covarrubias, Vicki Baum, Barbara Hutton and many others sought to experience the vision Spies offered while Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, the foremost anthropologists of their day, attempted to capture the secret of this tantalizing and enigmatic culture. Island of Demons is a fascinating historical novel, mixing anthropology, the history of ideas and humour. It offers a unique insight into that complex and multi-hued world that was so soon to be swept away, exploring both its ideas and the larger than life characters that inhabited it.

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Edited by Fjelstad and Nguyen
Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2006

Essays examining the resurgence of the Mother Goddess religion among contemporary Vietnamese following the economic “Renovation” period in Vietnam. Anthropologists explore the forces that compel individuals to become mediums and the social repercussions of their decisions and interactions.

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by Lee Jones
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Drawing on the fields of political economy and historical sociology, Lee dispels the overwhelming consensus among scholars that members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) never interfere in the internal affairs of other states, and pioneers a new approach to the understanding of regional politics in Southeast Asia.

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by Lee Yoong Yoong
World Scientific Publishing Company, 2011

The initiative to establish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Community was adopted by the ten leaders at the 2003 Bali Summit in Indonesia. Since then, the concept of a community-building process in ASEAN has become an issue that attracts a great deal of attention from scholars and experts around the world.

ASEAN Matters! Reflecting on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations carries essays with different perspectives on critical issues relating to the three pillars in building the ASEAN Community, namely the ASEAN Political and Security Community; the ASEAN Economic Community; and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. In a nutshell, this book provides broad and invaluable insights into the role ASEAN plays in enhancing peace, prosperity, and stability in the Southeast Asian region.

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Edited by Michael G. Plummer and Chia Siow Yue
Insitute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009

The ASEAN Economic Community constitutes the most ambitious programme of economic cooperation in the developing world. Its goal is to create no less than a free flow of goods, services, foreign direct investment, and skilled labour, as well as a freer flow of capital, throughout the region. Implementing this agenda will be technically and politically difficult. Hence, understanding the potential economic “payoff” is of the essence. The goal of this book is to assess empirically the likely economic effects of the AEC on the ASEAN Member States and associated stakeholders. It mobilizes a number of techniques to do so, and finds that the likely effects will be large, even greater than the anticipated effects of the Single Market Program in Europe, for example. The AEC will help the region improve competitiveness, facilitate the creation of production networks, foster the diffusion of “best practices,” and help ASEAN project its interests more effectively in an increasingly integrated, global economy.

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by Jurgen Haacke
Routledge, 2005

Examines the origins of ASEAN’s diplomatic and security culture and goes on to assess whether it is likely to remain salient as the political, economic and security context in which regional leaderships operate is undergoing further change.

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by Amitav Acharya
Routledge, 2009 (2nd edition)

This second edition of Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia takes the excellent framework from Acharya’s first edition and brings it up-to-date, looking at ASEAN’s comprehensive and critical account of the evolution of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) norms and the viability of the ASEAN way of conflict management.

Key issues in determining the future stability of the Southeast Asian and Asia Pacific region are covered, including:

• intra-regional relations and the effect of membership expansion
• the ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asian regionalism
• ASEAN’s response to terrorism and other transnational challenges
• debates over ASEAN’s non-interference doctrine
• the ‘ASEAN Security Community’ and the ASEAN Charter
• the impact of the rise of China and India and ASEAN’s relations with the US and Japan.

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