Ecology, Culture, Social Organization, and State Formation in Southeast Asia [and Comments and Reply

Abstract

In this paper I call attention to the significance of Southeast Asia to discussions of the nature of state formation. While it is now apparent that certain phases of cultural evolution came early in Southeast Asia, the state was a late and, in some respects, incomplete development. Southeast Asian states do not appear to have developed into the fully centralized, highly stratified, totalitarian regimes held to typify other regions of Asia, such as China or India. I suggest that this is not easily accounted for in terms of recent comparative theories of state formation or in terms of the interpretations contained in the writings of Southeast Asianists. I suggest finally that features of Southeast Asian social organization provide the most useful focus of analysis for explaining what did and did not occur in Southeast Asia and then discuss the question of how these features may have come into being.