383 pages, 6 x 9

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Release Date:15 Nov 1997

ISBN:9780774806466

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Asia Pacific

New Geographies of the Pacific Rim

By R. F. Watters and T.G. McGee

SERIES: Urbanization in Asia

UBC Press

The great processes reshaping our world today can be summed up by the term "globalisation". Together with the communications revolution and massive urbanisation, it is reshaping theorganisation of global space. It is illustrated by technological change, pronounced economic growth, the dominance of giant corporations, ever more open markets and universal consumption. Dramatic developments have occurred in Asia-Pacific trade, investment, labour movements and political cooperation, marked for example by APEC, a giant free-trade area designed to encompass about 60% of the world's population and half the world's economy.

But the processes also create social tension, political reaction and local resistance as a result of regional restructuring, widening regional disparities, the neglect of backward areas or imposed modernisation.

Asia Pacific: New Geographies of the Pacific Rim, written by leading scholars from the region, examines the extent to which Pacific Rim economies -- especially East Asia and Southeast Asia -- are increasingly integrated, and considers the economic, political and cultural forces at work. In the process, many "new geographies" are being created or reconstructed. At the same time, "the local-global dialectic" whereby local forces react to, negotiate with, resist or capitulate to global forces is examined.

Part I analyses globalisation and the emergence of sub-global regions, Part II the processes of change in Asia-Pacific, and Part III the national responses to globalisation. Part IV addresses local reactions to global forces: resistance, negotiatons or capitulation. Finally the editors enumerate the challenges to the region which centre on the crucial need to manage this era of globalisation so that sustainable societies can continue. This vast region needs careful management of globalisation, in which the forces of free trade and economic growth are the central determinants. For the time being, these forces seem to be in the ascendant.

RELATED TOPICS: Canadian Politics, Political Science, Public Policy & Administration

Author
Contents

T.G. McGee (editor) is Director, Institute of Asian Research, and Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia. He has carried out extensive research on urbanisation in Asia over the last 40 years. He is the author of The Southeast Asian City (1967), Third World Urbanization (1971), and together with Warwick Armstrong Theatres of Accumulation (1985). More recently, he has co-edited the Extended Metropolis in Asia (1991) and Mega-Urban Regions in Southeast Asia (1995). Ray Watters (editor) was Professor of Geography, Victoria University of Wellington, and specialised in development and social change in peasant and tribal societies in Latin America and the South Pacific. He recently worked in Guizhou, southwest China. Among his books are Poverty and Peasantry in the Peruvian Andes (1994), Shifting Cultivation in Latin America (1971) and Abemama: Social Change in Kiribati and Tuvalu (1983).

Acknowledgments and Dedication

Abbreviations

The Contributors

1. Introduction / T.G. McGee and R.F. Watters

Part I. Globalisation and the Emergence of Sub-Global Regions: The Case of the Asia-Pacific

2. Regional Integration, Internationalisation and the New Geographies of the Pacific Rim / Dean Forbes

3. Globalisation, Urbanisation and the Emergence of Sub-Global Regions: A Case Study of the Asia-Pacific Region / T.G. McGee

4. Pacific Rim Trade and APEC / Ron Sandrey

5. Asia-Pacific Regional Integration and Human Rights / Christopher Tremewan

Part II. Processes of Change in the Asia-Pacific Region

6. Imitating the Rich: The Imperatives of Consumption / Harvey Franklin

7. An Agricultural Transition on the Pacific Rim: Explorations Toward a Model / R.D. Hill

8. Japan's Foreign Direct Investment in the Pacific Rim, 1985-1993 / Peter J. Rimmer

9. Effectiveness and Replicability of East Asian Industrial Policies / Robert Wade

10. Facing the Urban Environmental Challenge / Yok-shiu F. Lee

Part III. National Responses to Globalisation in the Asia-Pacific Region

11. The East Asian Growth Model: South Korean Experience / R.M. Auty

12. The Rise of the Yen, 'Hollowing Out' and Japan's Troubled Industries / David W. Edgington

13. China in the Year 2000: Prospects for the Late Reform Era / David S.G. Goodman

14. Taiwan's Economic Growth and Its Southward Policy in Asia / Gerald Chan

15. Population Change and Development in Indonesia / Graeme Hugo

Part IV. Sites of Resistance, Negotiation and Capitulation

16. Intrusion of Global Forces and Transformation of a Local Chineses Economy: The Experience of Dongguan / George Chu-sheng Lin

17. Ideological Abstractions, Bureaucratic Imperatives and Human Creativity: A Philippines Narrative / Warwick Armstrong

18. Ethnicity, Geography, History and Nationalism: A Future of Ethnic Strife for the Inland Border Peoples of Mainland Southeast Asia? / John McKinnon

19. Transforming the Periphery: The Case of Sarawak, Malaysia / Philip S. Morrison

20. Resource Extraction and the Postcolonial State in Solomon Islands / Ian Frazer

21. Conclusion / T.G. McGee and R.F. Watters

Selected Readings on the Asia-Pacific Index

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