Southeast Asian sex workers are stereotypically understood as passive victims of the political economy, and submissive to western men. The advent of HIV/AIDS only compounds this image, as sex workers come to represent the victims of, and vectors for, a deadly virus. From sensationalist stories of Bangkok bar girls to United Nations conventions on global sex trafficking, the media, activists and academics alike condemn uneven processes of economic development and uneven relations of power in the sale of sex. Whilst the goal of such commentary may be to transform the economic and social...

This study argues that the major problems of epistemology come from concerns about our control over and responsibility for belief. It focuses on the arguments of Descartes, Locke and Hume and presents a discussion of the current trends in the field.

We call beliefs reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified. What does this imply about belief? Does this imply that we are responsible for our beliefs and that we should be blamed for our unreasonable convictions? Or does it imply that we are in control of our beliefs and that what we believe is up to us? Reason Without Freedom argues that the major problems of epistemology have their roots in concerns about our control over and responsibility for belief. David Owens focuses on the arguments of Descartes, Locke and Hume - the founders of epistemology - and presents a critical...

An overview of urbanization in 11 independent island states of the Pacific. It examines modern rapid growth, urban economy and society (especially land and identity) and the environmental consequences of over-urbanization in terms of contemporary urban planning and sustainable development.

With the economic growth of the Asia-Pacific region in the twentieth century came environmental change. Using case studies from mainland Southeast Asia and the Island Pacific, this book examines the processes of development and disruption that have led to concern over the use and sustainability of the region's natural resources.

Based on fieldwork in Malaysia, this book provides a critical examination of the country's main urban region.

Moving beyond conventional accounts of gated communities and housing segregation, this book interrogates the moral politics of urban place-making in China's commodity housing enclaves. Drawing on fieldwork and survey conducted in Shanghai, Pow critically demonstrates how gated communities are bound up in the cultural reproduction of middle-class landscape that is entrenched in the politics of the good life - defined in terms of a highly segregated landscape secured and maintained through the territorialisation of privilege, lifestyle and private property.

The study...

This book deals with the post-conflict geographies of violence and neoliberalization in Cambodia. Applying a geographical analysis to contemporary Cambodian politics, the author employs notions of neoliberalism, public space, and radical democracy as the most substantive components of its theoretical edifice.

International medical travel (IMT), people crossing national borders in the pursuit of healthcare, has become a growing phenomenon. With many of the countries currently being promoted as IMT destinations located in the 'developing' world, IMT poses a significant challenge to popular assumptions about who provides and receives care since it inverses and diversifies presumed directionalities of care.

This book analyses the development of international medical travel in Malaysia, by looking at the benefits and challenges of providing health care to non-Malaysians. It challenges...

This critical analysis challenges the conventional definition of globalization as an inevitable force to which societies must succumb. It shows how global processes are constituted and resisted, from the national economy to the village.