ABSTRACT
This chapter considers whether the anthropological study of South-East Asia has been characterized by a dominant tradition of work or a distinctive paradigm or whether there hais been theoretical diversity in approaches and interests. The anthropological study of South-East Asia has produced a notable literature, which has contributed both to our understanding of societies, cultures and socio-cultural transformations in the region and to the development of anthropology as a discipline. During the colonial period one might be tempted to suggest that there were certain distinctive paradigms in South-East Asian ethnology or anthropology, developed in response to specific socio-cultural commonalities, which might have been employed to define South-East Asia as a region. All the anthropological frameworks deployed were not specific to the region, and most of them responded to South-East Asia's diversity rather than any assumed unity. American anthropologists, unlike most of European counterparts, primarily directed themselves to the study and representation of South-East Asia from perspective of its 'peasant' heartlands.
