ABSTRACT
The 1970s-1980s was a time of both uncertainties and new opportunities. It was an era in which the new-born nation states of Southeast Asia boldly took the road of Western-styled development with economic successes that were nothing short of spectacular. The new-found prosperity was well reflected in the massive growth of metropoles such as Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, or Bangkok, which now drew hundreds of thousands of newcomers from both the nearby countryside and often remote islands, resulting in a hotchpotch of cultures, ethnic affiliations, and a variety of lifestyles in the city’s neighbourhoods. Also, the 1970s, and continuing in the 1980s, saw the resurfacing of religion in the public sphere, with especially the Islamist movement in much of Muslim Southeast Asia rapidly gaining ground. As a result, Southeast Asians were increasingly (re-)embedded in alternative trajectories of globalization, the West no longer serving as exclusive role model on how to be modern.
