The Identification of Regions in Colonial South-East Asia

In recent years there has been a growing stream of criticism concerning too easy acceptance of conventional wisdom in scholarly approaches to Third World countries, and a number of studies have examined the intellectual lineages of attitudes and concepts. Edward Said's work onOrientalism, evaluations of the colonial function of much anthropology, new looks at Marxist approaches to Asia and Western perceptions of Islam together form a powerful warning against assumptions that we actually know what we are talking about. The problem is, of course, that false images are not arbitrary creations, but grow out of certain traditions and their purposes in certain politico-economic contexts. While the concept of “region” is relatively innocuous, and lacks the ideological centrality of notions such as “oriental despotism,” “caste and tribe,” “the village” or even “adat”, it is nonetheless worth remembering that regional studies also developed within a certain intellectual and political climate.