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This is the first textbook survey of the pivotal position occupied by Southeast Asia in both the wider Asian and international economy. Professor Chris Dixon demonstrates how Southeast Asia's role has undergone frequent and profound change as a result of the successive emergence and dominance of mercantile, industrial and finance capital. He shows how the region has developed as a supplier of luxury products, such as spices; as a producer of bulk primary products; and how, since the 1960s, it has become a major recipient of investment and a favored location for labor-intensive manufacturing operations. The author examines how this progressive integration of South East Asia in the world economy has established the dominance of a small number of core areas and, in a concluding chapter, he explores the way in which the restructuring of the world economy in the 1980s has opened Southeast Asia to a new cycle of capitalist penetration.
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South East Asia has for many centuries occupied a pivotal position in the wider Asian economy, linking China and the Far East with India and the Middle East, and since the early 1500s the region has also played a major role in the world-economy. South East Asia in the world-economy is the first textbook survey of the area's interaction with these wider regional and international structures. Professor Chris Dixon demonstrates how South East Asia's role has undergone frequent and profound change as a result of the successive emergence and dominance of mercantile, industrial and finance capital. He shows how the region has developed as a supplier of luxury products, such as spices; as a producer of bulk primary products; and how, since the mid-1960s, it has become a major recipient of investment and a favoured location for labourintensive manufacturing operations, producing goods for European and American markets. The author examines how these phases in the evolution of the international economy have been reflected in the relations of production and in the spatial pattern of economic activity. He also discusses how the progressive integration of South East Asia in the world-economy has established the dominance of a small number of core areas and produced a pattern of uneven development throughout the region. In a concluding chapter, Chris Dixon explores the prospects for South East Asia in the 1990s in the light of the restructuring of the world-economy. Geography of the World-Economy Series editors: PETER TAYLOR University of Newcastle upon Tyne (General Editor) JOHN AGNEW Syracuse University CHRIS DIXON City of London Polytechnic DEREK GREGORY University of British Columbia ROGER LEE Queen Mary College, London A geography without knowledge of place is hardly a geography at all. And yet traditional regional geography, underpinned by discredited theories of environmental determinism, is in decline. This new series Geography of the World-Economy will reintegrate regional geography with modern theory and practice — by treating regions as dynamic components of an unfolding worldeconomy. Geography of the World-Economy will be a textbook series. Individual titles will approach regions from a radical political—economic perspective. Regions have been created by individuals working through institutions as different parts of the world have been incorporated in the world-economy. The new geographies in this series will examine the ever-changing dialectic between local interests and conflict and the wider mechanisms, economic and social, which shape the world system. They will attempt to capture a world of interlocking places, a mosaic of regions continually being made and remade. The readership for this important new series will be wide. The radical new geographies it provides will prove essential reading for second-year or junior/ senior students on courses in regional geography, and