Some Thoughts on Social Science Research: 50 Years of Engagement in Southeast Asia

The paper briefly discusses the merits of multidisciplinary-based studies as against disciplinary perspectives in relation to southeast asia. it suggests that the main conceptual innovations and established methodological approaches derive from academic disciplines. there is then a sequential series of reflections on changing priorities in the sociological study of southeast asia which plots the movement from those concerns which derived from ‘classical’ western-based sociology and certain key ideas which emerged from those concerns, and a more recent shift to interest in the concepts of culture and identity. the paper illustrates this shift in describing one of the possible autobiographical routeways to the encounter with culture.