The making of Southeast Asia: International Relations of a region by Amitav Acharya. 2012 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
The preface of Acharya’s book underscores the principal assumption driving his argument: that regions are socially constructed. In other words, the policymaking elite’s desire for a Southeast Asian regional identity coupled with “intraregional patterns of interaction, play a crucial role in the making of Southeast Asia as a region” (p. xi). The book builds on the first edition published by Oxford University Press under the title The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia in 2000 . The second edition contains two new chapters, one of which (chapter 2) draws upon secondary (historical and anthropological) literature and the second (chapter 8) explores several non-traditional security threats facing the region. To complement this lengthy text, Acharya also adds an interesting collection of historical pictures interspaced in different sections of the book. This brings the book to a hefty 410 pages divided into nine chapters. The book begins by addressing the elepha