00074918.2013.809853

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Changing Marriage Patterns in Southeast Asia:

Economic and Socio-cultural Dimensions

Aris Ananta

To cite this article: Aris Ananta (2013) Changing Marriage Patterns in Southeast Asia: Economic and Socio-cultural Dimensions, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 49:3, 398-399, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2013.809853

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2013.809853

Published online: 05 Dec 2013.

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398 Book reviews

questions about whether their momentum can be sustained in the coming years; the Chinese government has already lowered its estimate of economic growth from the steady 9%–10% of the past three decades to 7.5% this year. And while India has grown faster than Indonesia during the past two decades, last year the

trend was reversed for the irst time.

The discussion of the four large Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia, Malay-sia, the Philippines and Thailand – is also of interest. Of the four, only Thailand has experienced uneven growth in recent years, owing to the protracted political unrest in the country after the ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra by the military. In general, however, the relatively good economic performance of these

countries is due to sound economic policies, as relected by their low rates of inla

-tion and low budget deicits, and the iscal sustainability of their governments, as relected by the steady decline in their ratios of public debt to GDP.

The authors do not discuss the adverse environmental impact of the rapid growth of these countries, which is a pity; China, India and Indonesia are, in descending order, the three largest emitters of greenhouse gases in Asia, accord-ing to the OECD. Despite this minor stricture, the editors are to be commended

for producing such a ine book, which should be recommended reading for

Asia-focused economics lecturers and their students.

Thee Kian Wie Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta

Gavin W. Jones, Terence H. Hull and Maznah Mohamad (eds) (2011) Changing Marriage Patterns in Southeast Asia: Economic and Socio-cultural Dimensions, Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia

Series, Routledge, Abingdon, pp. xii + 239. Cloth: £95.00.

This edited collection examines partnership and marriage patterns in their

eco-nomic, social and cultural contexts in the Malay world (the ethno-linguistic dei

-nition), or in archipelagic Southeast Asia (the geographic deinition). It comprises

quantitative and qualitative contributions from demographers, sociologists and anthropologists – one of whom is also an insider: Setiawati Intan Savitri, the co-author of chapter 5, ‘Politics and marriage among Islamic activists in Indonesia’. She is herself a Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Prosperous Justice Party) activist.

Southeast Asia is far from homogenous, so its inherent cultural and economic

diversity makes broad assessments dificult. Indonesia and Malaysia, for exam -ple, are predominantly Muslim; the Philippines predominantly Catholic. Sin-gapore and Malaysia, in particular, have large Chinese and Indian populations, while Indonesia has a huge number of different ethnic and sub-ethnic groups. A small country, Singapore is one of the world’s richest countries; Indonesia has the world’s fourth-largest population but much lower income per capita than Singa-pore. In response, the book combines introductory quantitative analyses of trends in marriage and teenage marriage, which give a broad picture of partnership

patterns in the region, with country-speciic ield studies of smaller samples in

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Book reviews 399

Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. These studies bring a deeper understanding of marriage patterns from various points, including those of statis-tics, polistatis-tics, poverty, culture, policy, law, migration and urbanisation.

What the book lacks, however, is a forecast of what may happen to partnership and marriage patterns in the region. For example, will declining fertility rates, continued urbanisation and economic growth, and rising connectedness change these patterns? Have all recent changes been linked to the ‘second demographic transition’ phenomenon, in which fertility rates fall below replacement levels and individualism becomes more important than social norms? Tey Nai Peng, in chapter 10, ‘Understanding marriage and divorce trends in peninsular Malaysia’, concludes that delayed marriage, non-marriage and divorce have become less about social choice than about individual decisions.

In short, this collection should be read by those who are interested in the inter-action between partnership and marriage, on the one hand, and social, economic and political development, on the other.

Aris Ananta Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore