The Making of the Asia Pacific: Knowledge Brokers and the Politics of Representation

Critically surveying the power of narratives in shaping the discourse on the post-Cold War Asia Pacific, See Seng Tan examines the purposes, practices, power relations, and protagonists behind policy networks such as the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council. The author argues that, filled with economic, social, and political meaning, the policy and academic discourses regarding the Asia Pacific and its subregions authorize and provoke certain understandings while preventing counternarratives from emerging.