ABSTRACT
This chapter devotes some attention to the reasons which have been deployed for denying South-East Asia an identity, which enables to say something about the perspectives of anthropologists and of scholars from other academic disciplines. It considers the arguments which have been mustered to endow South-East Asia with a positive status equivalent to the neighbouring continental land-masses of China and India. The concept of a South-East Asia, comprising independent but interrelated nation-states, is given greater salience with the undoubted success of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This regional organization was formed in 1967 by the Kingdom of Thailand, the Republics of the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore and the Federation of Malaysia primarily to promote economic cooperation among its member states. Western scholarship therefore tended to view South-East Asia from the perspective of either India or China or both.
