ABSTRACT
In his book Age of extremes: the short twentieth century 1914—1991 , Eric Hobsbawm contends that in the mid-1980s there were only three regions of the globe which 'remained essentially dominated by their villages and fields: sub-Saharan Africa, South and continental South-east Asia, and China'. He continues: 'In these regions alone was it still possible to find countries which the decline of the cultivators has apparently passed by ...' (Hobsbawm 1994: 291). This chapter aims to show that at the beginning of the twenty-first century this perspective, so far as Southeast Asia is concerned, is increasingly difficult to sustain. 1 Southeast Asia is no longer a region of peasants. Indeed, the rest of this book will set out the case for a profound transformation in the nature and structure of the rural economy and rural lives. Angeles-Reyes, in her discussion of rural change in the Philippines, poses a question that sets the stage for the discussion in this and later chapters: 'What does the growth of nonfarm rural employment signify beyond the obvious fact of labour market differentiation?' (1994: 133). As will become clear, it is both symptomatic of deep-seated structural and social changes while also providing the impetus which further embeds such changes.
