This is not only the best collection of essays on the political economy of Southeast Asia but
also as a singular achievement of the Murdoch School one of the rarest of books that
demonstrates how knowledge production travels across generations institutions and time periods
thereby continually enriching itself. No course on Southeast Asia can afford to miss it as its
core text. (Professor Amitav Acharya American University USA) This book - the fourth in a
path-breaking series - demonstrates why a critical political economy approach is more crucial
than ever for understanding Southeast Asia's transformation. Across a wide range of topics the
book explains how capitalist development and globalisation are reshaping the societies
economies and politics of a diverse group of countries casting light on the deep sources of
economic and social power in the region. This is a book that every student of Southeast Asia
needs to read. (Professor Edward Aspinall Australian National University Australia) This book
does what a work on political economy should do: challenge existing paradigms in order to gain
a deeper understanding of the processes of social transformation. This volume is distinctive in
three ways. First it eschews methodological nationalism and focuses on how the interaction of
national regional and global forces are shaping and reshaping systems of governance mass
politics economies labor-capital relations migration and gender relations across the
region. Second it is a bold effort to show how the Murdoch School which focuses on the
dynamic synergy of internal class relations and global capitalism provides a better
explanatory framework for understanding social change in Southeast Asia than the rival
developmental state and historical institutionalist approaches. Third alongside established
luminaries in the field it showcases the younger generation of political economists doing
pathbreaking work on different dimensions of the political economy of the region. (Walden Bello
State University of New York at Binghamton USA and Former Member of the Philippines' House of
Representatives) This very timely fourth edition explores Southeast Asia's political economy
within the context of hyperglobalisation and China's pronounced social-structural impacts on
international politics finance and economics over the past decade and a half. The volume
successfully adopts a cross-cutting thematic approach while also conveying the diversity and
divergences among the Southeast Asian states and economies. This will be an important resource
for scholars of International Relations and Comparative Politics who need to take an interest
in a dynamic and increasingly significant part of Asia. (Professor Evelyn Goh Australian
National University Australia) This ambitious collection takes a consistent theoretical
approach and applies it to a thematic comparative analysis across Southeast Asia. The yield is
impressive: the social political and economic forces constituting the current conjuncture are
not simply invoked they are thoroughly identified and explained. By posing the deceptively
simple questions of what is happening and why the authors demonstrate the reciprocal relation
between theory-building and empirical inquiry providing a model of engaged scholarship with
global resonance. Bravo! (Professor Tania Li University of Toronto Canada) Counteracting the
spaceless and flattened geography of much literature on uneven development this book delivers
a forensic examination of the unevenness of geographical development in Southeast Asia and the
relations of force shaping capital state nature and civil society. This is the most
compelling theoretical and empirical political economy book available on Southeast Asia.
(Professor Adam David Morton University of Sydney Australia) A vital book for all scholars
students and practitionersc
