The term ‘Southeast Asia’ has come to cover all Asian countries south of China and east of India, an area of some 4.5 million sq. km. As of 1985, this region was estimated to have a population of 404 million, of whom 243 million lived in Island Southeast Asia (including peninsular Malaysia) and 160 million in Mainland Southeast Asia.
The region is cross-cut by several significant oppositions. First, the inhabitants of Island Southeast Asia overwhelmingly speak languages belonging to the Austronesian language family, while those of the Mainland speak languages belonging to the Austroasiatic (Mon-Khmer), Tai and Tibeto-Burman families.
Second, the region may be divided into four religious zones, with Catholic *Christianity dominant in the Philippines; Sunni *Islam of the Shafiite school of law in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei; Theravada *Buddhism in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia; and strong Confucian influences in Vietnam and Singapore. All these countries have large religious and cultural minorities, however, Burma being the most diverse. Third, technoeconomic differences cross-cut both of the previous two divisions. Everywhere one finds a contrast between ‘hill people’ practising shifting cultivation, ‘valley people’ practising irrigated rice cultivation, and ‘coastal people’ who were historically orientated to fishing and maritime trade. Of these three sets of divisions, the last is most relevant for understanding the theoretical issues that Southeast Asia has raised for anthropology.
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