On the borders of Southeast Asia: Cold War geography and the construction of the other

Themes developed in US Cold War propaganda campaigns during the 1950s to promote the development of the South East Asia Treaty Organization also appeared within the work of Southeast Asianist geographers-particularly in their construction of Southeast Asia as an entity with a distinctive and unified character that distinguished it from China. This Cold War construction of a Southeast Asian “we-self” by both geo-politicians and scholars tended to efface “internal” Southeast Asian differences in the name of unity of interest, especially differences of interest based on class and related social group identities. I show this by looking at two different types of Cold War approaches to Southeast Asian geography: an essentialist and environmental determinist Cold War approach exemplified by Fisher's work, and a social constructivist or pragmatist Cold War geography exemplified by Donald Fryer's work. Further, I argue that similarly functioning “imaginative geographies” are now being forged to legitimize the US “war on terror” in Southeast Asia.