ABSTRACT
This chapter 1 offers some remarks on the theme of emerging classes and growing inequalities in Southeast Asia. The main materials presented here are derived mostly from ongoing research in Malaysia. Research on rapidly changing social constellations in Asia raises a large number of theoretical issues, particularly for those accustomed to treating places such as Malaysia as peripheral in one way or another to the world capitalist economy and the global system of nation states. Here I shall refer briefly to some of these issues, although clearly their resolution would require a good deal more than that. Finally, the sketch of the new constellation of economic, political and social forces this contribution offers is based largely on an analysis of developments in Malaysia over the past couple of decades, although many of the processes at work in Malaysia will also be seen to be operating elsewhere in the region. Nonetheless, this contribution will focus on the Malaysian case, and leave it to readers to deal with the question of the extent to which Malaysian processes are being repeated elsewhere.
