Southeast Asia has long fascinated development practitioners and researchers for being one of the few regions of the world that has resisted global trends to become a successful developing region.

Divided into accessible thematic chapters, this book adopts a unique perspective of equitable development to outline the strengths and weaknesses of the transformations taking place in the Southeast Asian region. Focusing on four key themes: equality and inequality; political freedom and opportunity; empowerment and participation; and environmental sustainability, these concepts are used...

This book presents an unprecedented analysis of the dynamics of cultural representation and interpretation in film criticism. It examines how French critical reception of Australian cinema since the revival period of the 1970s has evolved as a narrative of perpetual discovery, and how a clear parallel can be drawn between French critics reading of Australian film and their interpretation of an exotic Australian national identity. In French critical writing on Australian cinema, Australian identity is frequently defined in terms of extremes of cultural specificity and cultural anonymity. On...

This volume examines representations and explorations of travel ideals in contemporary international cinema. It assembles work from a diverse range of academic fields including anthropology, sociology, ethnography, cinema, culture, tourism, communication and language studies, with contributions from international experts such as Mary Louise Pratt of New York University, whose work on 'contact zones' continues to provide the framework for scholarship on travel writing around the world. The volume explores the link between filmed spaces and real locations, with one of the fundamental dynamics...