The eleven countries that make up the Southeast Asian region provide a rich and diverse context in which to view the development process and experience. The region spans different cultural contexts, colonial experiences, and economic experiments, and is home to some of the world's most successful developing economies-the so-styled Asian 'miracle' economies-and also some which fall into the UN designation of 'least developed'.

This new three-volume collection, from Routledge's Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences series, is guided by a broad definition of 'development' and does not limit itself to development economics or even to development studies. Papers on development issues by anthropologists, historians, sociologists, geographers, political scientists, as well as by economists are represented in the volumes. The works are ordered not by disciplinary orientation (economics, anthropology, history, etc.) or by chronology (colonial, postcolonial, and so on) but, predominantly, by context and theme, to enable the intellectual progression of debates regarding, for example, the nature of rural society and rural development, to be more easily identified. The structure and range of works included within Southeast Asian Development ensure that it will be an invaluable reference resource for students and scholars alike.