In China's Backyard

Jason Morris-Jung is senior lecturer in Social Research at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS).

In this fascinating multi-disciplinary and multi-sited volume, the authors challenge reductionist and oversimplifying approaches to understanding China's engagement with Southeast Asia. Productively viewing these interactions through a 'resource lens', the editor has transcended disciplinary and area studies divides in order to assemble a dynamic and diverse group of scholars with extensive experience across Southeast Asia and in China, all while bringing together perspectives from resource economics, policy analysis, international relations, human geography, political ecology, history, sociology and anthropology. The result is an important collection that not only offers empirically detailed studies of Chinese energy and resource investments in Southeast Asia, but which attends to the complex and often ambivalent ways in which such investments have become both a source of anxiety and aspiration for different stakeholders in the region. It is essential reading for scholars seeking to understand the diverse contours of Chinese investment in Southeast Asia" - Erik Harms, Department of Anthropology, Yale University "How have large-scale resource deals between China and the countries of Southeast Asia come to rest in places and peoples lives? This is the question that animates this important book, complicating what is often seen in stark, binary terms. There is no simple answer, as the contributions make all too clear. Local histories and geographies, socio-cultural contexts and national policies all require an excavation of shaping factors and conditions if a semblance of explanation is to be rendered. This book helps us in that process of getting beneath the surface." - Jonathan Rigg, Director, Asia Research Institute and Raffles Professor of Social Science, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore