Thomas A. Rumney - The Geography of Southeast Asia: A Scholarly Bibliography and Guide

A Scholarly Bibliography and Guide

Thomas A. Rumney

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An Introduction to the Bibliographic Study of the Geography of Southeast Asia

The region of Southeast Asia has long been an interest to many professional geographers, and of course, to other academics. Economic, political, environmental, social, and other sub-fields of geographic study on this region have been developed and have grown, especially during the twentieth century with the founding and expansion of many institutions of higher learning, departments of geography, academic publishers, and scholarly journals. It is the primary purpose of this compendium to collect under one cover as large a listing of geographical studies on Southeast Asia as is possible to find.

A question that could and probably should come now is, why do this? Wouldnt it be easier, quicker, and neater to just dive into varied web pages, and other electronic sources for such bibliographic materials? The students of today certainly would be the first to suggest such an approach to the study of this region, and often theyve said exactly that to this author. There are several answers to that idea. First, despite the growing number of such electronic sources, not all journals and publishers have web pages, or have such linkages that many simply do not know much about. Regrettably, some web pages are either incomplete in their information or have mistakes that lessen the usefulness of such sources. Often, the hardest to find resources on Southeast Asia are found in published proceedings, or as chapters of books and monographs, and as such are often buries out of clear view for the research. This also can be the case for masters theses and doctoral dissertation. The collective usefulness of all sorts of publications and writing collected between one set of covers is therefore extremely helpful for the researcher, the teacher, and the student of Southeast Asian geography. And, in addition to discovering what has been studied and published on a particular region or topic of geographic study of Southeast Asia, such a volume also helps to point out what has not been done about these and other possible topics of geographic study on this region.

Organization and Information Inclusions

The entries included here represent a major portion of all scholarly publications written about this region by geographers. These entries include atlases, books, book chapters, articles from scholarly journals, proceedings papers, doctoral dissertations, and masters theses. While a majority of these entries are written in English, there are also many works included that are written in French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages. There are also many entries listed with English-language titles translated from other languages. Those languages are noted in the relevant inclusions where appropriate.

There are several levels of organization within this bibliography. The first level of organization is by region or country. The initial chapter presents entries that refer to two or more countries, or to Southeast Asia as a whole. The following eleven chapters focus on the individual countries of the area. They include: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the newest country in the region, East Timor. One immediate and noticeable characteristic of these chapters is their uneven lengths. Simply, some parts of Southeast Asia have received more attention by academic geographers than others. The importance of the existence of academic journals within a country or about a specific country greatly adds to the volume and variety of publications that these separate chapters have. So too does the existence of academic geography departments at universities and colleges in the respective countries. Additionally, in many cases there are continuing academic (as well as other) linkages between the present countries in Southeast Asia, their universities, and academic personnel with former colonial nations elsewhere.

Secondly, each of these main chapters is further organized into general specialties commonly recognized in academic geography. Starting with general works, texts, atlases, etc., sub-sections on cultural geography, economic geography, historical geography, physical geography, political geography, and urban geography follow for each country or region. One exception here is that Singapore has no separate urban geography sub-section. This recognizes its unique city-state existence.

Each of these sub-sections is again divided into clear sub-specialties within that type of geography. For example, economic geography sections for each of the regions or countries can include sub-sections identified as general works, agriculture and land use, commerce and trade, manufacturing and labor, energyfishing-forestry-mining, and dissertations and theses. Where no entries have been found for these sub-sections, the headings for these sections are simply not listed. Also, within each one of these sub-sections, each individual entry is listed by authors last name, from Aa to Zz. Where there is more than one entry per author within these sub-sections, the earliest publication is listed first and all subsequent entries are listed chronologically thereafter. Each entrys information is recorded as was found in the source for that entry without extra proofing and editing. In addition, the author index, at the end of the volume, is added to enhance the ease of finding specific works done by particular authors and editors. These entries are listed by the pages they are found upon. Again, in the cases of multiple entries, the pages listed here in the index are consecutive.

While the totality of entries listed here represents probably the vast majority of research and published works done by geographers on some aspect of Southeast Asia, it is also probable that something has been missed. This is the responsibility of the author and not the publisher printing this volume. It is hoped that two major services are provided for those who use this compendium. The first, and more obvious, is that this is a convenient and useful list of existing works on the geography of Southeast Asia that can assist scholars and students in both research and study of the region. The second service is to provide a picture about what has not been done on various aspects of the regions geographies. Such knowledge will hopefully encourage more varied efforts by geographers to further our knowledge and understanding of Southeast Asias dynamic geographies.

Special Thanks

Some special people deserve an extra recognition of thanks for their help in the writing of this compendium. First, Cheryl LaFountain, the interlibrary loan librarian at Plattsburgh State University, was endlessly patient and diligent in obtaining books and other sources of information for this work. Her efforts were vital to the completion and extent of this volume. Next, Dr. Shirlena Huang, the chair of the department at the National University of Singapore and her staff, provided much valuable information, as well. My thanks go to them. Plus, many others working here in Plattsburgh and at many other university libraries, including Cornell University, the University of Vermont, McGill University, and here at Plattsburgh State University were helpful and important resources for this volume. My thanks go to them as well. Finally, I thank the editorial staff at University Press of America for their many efforts in getting this collection to print.