Southeast Asian Urbanism is based on the results of over two decades of field research on cities and towns of Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. The connections between micro and macro processes, between grassroots interactions and urban structures, between social theory and empirical data are analysed to provide a vivid picture of the great variety of urban forms, the social creativity in the slums of Bangkok, Manila or Jakarta, the variety of cultural symbolism and the political and religious structuration of urban space.
The book is written in the tradition of German or European sociological research from Marx and Weber to Habermas and Bourdieu. The work on Southeast Asian urbanism was carried out within the research programme of the Sociology of Development Research Centre of the University of Bielefeld in Germany, but also during teaching and research assignments at Chulalongkorn University, the National University of Singapore, the Science University of Malaysia, the National University of Malaysia, Andalas University, Padang, the Population Studies Centre at Gadjah Mada University, the University of Indonesia, the University of the Philippines and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
The book will be of interest to urban anthropologists, political scientists and sociologists, to students of Southeast Asian history, culture and society, to urban planners and policy makers.
( Hans-Dieter Evers ist Professor emeritus f³r Entwicklungsplanung und Senior Fellow am Zentrum f³r Entwicklungsplanung (ZEF) der Universitõt Bonn.)
H. R. Korff is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Passau.
