Social Forces in Southeast Asia

Social Forces in Southeast Asia

CORA DU BOIS
Copyright Date: 1949
Edition: NED - New edition
Published by: University of Minnesota Press
Pages: 80
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttt1b6
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  • Book Info
    Social Forces in Southeast Asia
    Book Description:

    “Forces are at work in Southeast Asia which deserve the most judicious attention of diplomats, the best analysis by social scientists, and a highly serious interest on the part of all responsible people in the Western World.” The application of cultural anthropology to problems of world politics and economics presented here has been made by a ranking authority in the field. Dr. Du Bois is the author of The People of Alor and before World War 2 she was anthropologist at Sarah Lawrence College. During the war she was associated with the Office of Strategic Services in charge of Indonesian and South Asian research, with headquarters at Kandy, Ceylon. Since October 1945 she has been chief of the Southern Areas Branch, Office of Intelligence Research, Department of State. Siam, Burma, French Indochina, Malaya, and Indonesian Archipelago, and the Philippines offer a geographic unit rich in material for the social scientist, including, as it does, more diverse cultural strains than any other area of the world. The author considers the impact of European colonization on the region, analyzes the tensions created by value difference between East and West, and offers predictions on the course Southeast Asia will take in the future. Dr. Du Bois has risen above statistical science and narrow specialization to wide interpretation and application. The book is full of exciting theses and suggestive ideas which should open new areas for both factual investigation and creative speculation. Dr. Du Bois sees a growing consciousness of nationality in these states of Southeast Asia - and eagerness to work out their common problems and a desire to participate in the United Nations, but she does not minimize the grave economic difficulties of the area or the chance that it will become another powder keg if the states become pawns of the big powers.

    eISBN: 978-1-4529-3654-3
    Subjects: Anthropology

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. 1-6)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. 7-8)
  3. Chapter I SOME GENERAL CONCEPTS
    (pp. 9-24)

    THE generalizations and speculations which constitute the major part of this book cannot be considered scientific in any serious or rigorous definition of the word. They are frankly the distillates offered by a writer who was trained in the social sciences and who has been engrossed in an area. The objectives, however, do approximate the goals that social scientists working on an area may well set themselves. The faith of science is that the universe is ordered and that such order can be detected by human intelligence. Therefore, social sciences are concerned with discovering what is consistent and regular in...

  4. Chapter II SOME SOCIAL FACTORS DISCERNIBLE IN THE SOUTHEAST ASIA OF 1940
    (pp. 25-51)

    SOUTHERN Asia stretches from the subcontinent of India to the Australian subcontinent. Within it Southeast Asia is encompassed. From Karachi in Pakistan to Melbourne in Australia is some 6600 miles. From Melbourne to northern Luzon in the Philippines is some 4100 air miles. From northern Luzon back to Karachi is approximately another 3500 miles.

    In the center of this great south Asian triangle lie the variously specialized cultures of Southeast Asia: on the Indochinese Peninsula are Burma, Siam, Indochina, and Malaya; on the island arc at its base, the archipelagoes of Indonesia and the Philippines.

    In the large south Asian...

  5. Chapter III POTENTIALITIES OF THESE FACTORS
    (pp. 52-78)

    THE Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia failed to stir enthusiasm for the Japanese, and for their version of the Co-Prosperity Sphere and of Greater East Asia in the minds of the peoples of those countries. The war, however, did accentuate nationalist sentiments and the determination to achieve independence. First, Japan granted at least the illusion of independence to the Burmese, the Laotians, Cambodians, and the Filipinos; and at the time of capitulation sanctioned the formation of the Republic of Indonesia and the Vietnam in Indochina. During the war a second source of encouragement to independence was the Atlantic Charter and...