New Books In Southeast Asian Studies

In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. In Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World (Harvard UP, 2022), Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Iran. These states sought paths to socialism without formal adherence to the Soviet bloc or the programs that Soviets, East Germans, Cubans, Chinese, and other outsiders tried to promote. Instead, they attempted to forge new models of socialist development through their own trial and error, together with the help of existing socialist countries, demonstrating the flexibility and adaptability of socialism. All five countries would become Cold War battlegrounds and regional models, as new policies in one shaped evolving conceptions of development in another. Lessons from the collapse of democracy in Indonesia were later

East Timor is choosing a president. What is the significance of the 2022 presidential elections in Timor Leste? Has Asia’s youngest and newest country become a prisoner of its short but turbulent political part? How do young people view the older generation of former freedom fighters who continue to dominate the political order? What has the atmosphere been like on the ground during the election campaign? In the first of a short series of East Timor-focused Nordic Asia Podcasts, Amber Woortman, a master’s student in political science at the University of Copenhagen, talks to NIAS Director Duncan McCargo from Dili about her observations and her conversations with candidates and voters in Timor Leste over the past couple of weeks. This is a rare opportunity to hear about an election that has received very little mainstream international media coverage. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) bas

Vaccines have controlled or even eradicated some of the world’s most serious diseases. Throughout the last century and up until recently with the COVID-19 pandemic, the development of successful vaccines has widely been heralded a triumph to combat devastating virus outbreaks. The success of immunisations, however, has always been limited by issues of public acceptance. Understanding why people are or aren’t vaccinated is crucial to public health responses to diseases like measles and, of course, COVID-19. Many are concerned about the impact of anti-vaccination activism and misinformation on vaccine programs. But is vaccine hesitancy always due to misinformation, and how do we go about measuring it? Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Dr Kerrie Wiley unpacks some of these issues, and discusses the various drivers of vaccine acceptance in Southeast Asia. About Kerrie Wiley: Dr Kerrie Wiley is a Senior Research Fellow with the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, in the Faculty of Medicine an

Around five million people across Southeast Asia identify as Shan. Though the Shan people were promised an independent state in the 1947 Union of Burma constitution, successive military governments blocked their liberation. From 1958 onward, insurgency movements, including the Shan United Revolutionary Army, have fought for independence from Myanmar. Refugees numbering in the hundreds of thousands fled to Thailand to escape the conflict, despite struggling against oppressive citizenship laws there. Several decades of continuous rebellion have created a vacuum in which literati and politicians have constructed a virtual Shan state that lives on in popular media, rock music, and Buddhist ritual. In Repossessing Shanland: Myanmar, Thailand, and a Nation-State Deferred (U Wisconsin Press, 2021), Jane M. Ferguson details the origins of these movements and tells the story of the Shan in their own voices. She shows how the Shan have forged a homeland and identity during great upheaval by using state building as an o

Southeastern Myanmar (Burma). The Myanmar military has carried out arial attacks on villages: targeting schools, libraries, and villagers’ agricultural fields. In the past year, roughly one hundred thousand civilians have been displaced in the Southeast alone. Many have attempted to seek refuge in neighboring Thailand but have not been accepted as refugees. In addition to this ongoing emergency of forced migration, there are currently an additional hundred thousand refugees from Myanmar living in nine refugee camps in Thailand, which have existed for over thirty years. In early 2022, for the first time in years, there were protests in the camps over lack of rights and demanding decreased restrictions for refugees. In this podcast Terese Gagnon speaks with Hayso Thako about the experiences of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border and what they can tell us about approaches to humanitarianism and development more broadly. Read this co-authored article about the refugee situation on the Thai-Myanmar border by Hayso

Why did Restart Thailand, a 2020 student-led pro-democracy movement, sport a red Communist-style logo with a hammer and sickle? Why did a Thai BNK48 singer wear a swastika t-shirt for the band’s 2019 concert rehearsal? And why did the latest Thai junta produce a video of two boys applauding a portrait of Adolf Hitler to promote Thai values? Verita Sriratana, an Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Chulalongkorn University, discusses this deeply troubling Thai infatuation with Nazi and Communist symbolism with Petra Alderman (prev. Desatova), an Associate Researcher at NIAS. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments abo

Migration and architecture have emerged as a new topic of research at a global level. Migrant worker dormitories in Singapore, for example, are sites where structural inequities in architecture and legal regulations have had a significant impact on the living conditions of migrant workers, and they hit the headlines in 2020 as sites for the rapid spread of COVID. Dr Jennifer Ferng joins Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories to talk about the relationship between architecture and labour, arguing that climate change, capital, and power intersect with the forced displacement of migrants to reinforce existing inequalities of ethnicity, class, and citizenship in Singapore. About Jennifer Ferng: Dr Jennifer Ferng is Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Academic Director at the University of Sydney. Her research addresses asylum seekers and refugees, forced displacement, and migration in the built environment of the Asia-Pacific region. Most recently, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studi

In conversation with Duncan McCargo about her new book Chasing Freedom: The Philippines Long Journey to Democratic Ambivalence (Sussex Academic Press, 2022), Adele Webb offers a spirited defence of what she calls 'democratic ambivalence': the mixed feelings many Filipinos harbour about their own hybrid political system. She argues that Philippine ambivalence towards democracy results from a particular historical experience, and should be embraced rather than deprecated. Adele Webb is a lecturer in the School of Justice at the Queensland University of Technology and an adjunct research fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University, Australia. Duncan McCargo is director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. How did Rodrigo Duterte earn the support of large segments of the Philippine middle class, despite imposing arbitrary authority and offering little tolerance for dissent? Has the Filipino middle class, heroes of the 1986 Pe

Analysing three cases of British colonial violence that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century, this book argues that all three share commonalities, including the role of racial prejudices in justifying the perpetration of extreme colonial violence. Exploring the connections and comparisons between the Perak War (1875–76), the 'Hut Tax' Revolt in Sierra Leone (1898–99) and the Anglo-Egyptian War of Reconquest in the Sudan (1896–99), Gordon highlights the significance of decision-making processes, communication between London and the periphery and the influence of individual colonial administrators in outbreaks of violence. Michelle Gordon's book Extreme Violence and the ‘British Way’: Colonial Warfare in Perak, Sierra Leone and Sudan (Bloomsbury, 2020) reveals the ways in which racial prejudices, the advocacy of a British 'civilising mission' and British racial 'superiority' informed colonial administrators' decisions on the ground, as well as the rationalisation of extreme violence. Responding to a

Bangkok, as Thailand’s largest and most economically-important cities, attracts migrants from all over the country. Drawn to its economic opportunities, migrants eke a living working in informal jobs, with few protections–yet they build a community among their fellow migrants and workers. The King of Bangkok (University of Toronto Press: 2021), written by Claudio Sopranzetti, illustrated by Sara Fabbri and translated from its original Italian by Chiara Natalucci, tells the story of one such migrant: Nok, who lives through economic upheaval, protest movements and military crackdowns, in a story based on years of research. Claudio Sopranzetti is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Central European University. He is the author of Owners of the Map: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility, and Politics in Bangkok (University of California Press: 2017), winner of the 2019 Margaret Mead Award. Sara Fabbri is an illustrator and editorial designer, currently working as Art Director

King Vajiravudh ruled over Siam from 1910 to 1925. He is widely known to Thais as a nationalist king who proposed an essential ‘Thainess’ through his myriad of writings. Yet contrary to popular expectations, King Vajiravudh’s attitude towards the West was nothing short of ambivalent. In fact, King Vajiravudh’s dynamic practice of translating works of Western literature into Thai points to strong bonds of affection towards Great Britain and France in particular. To explore this connection, Dr Natali Pearson is joined by Dr Faris Yothasamuth who argues that King Vajiravudh’s fascination with the West and Western discourses heavily influenced his management of the Kingdom of Siam, and in doing so, shaped the country’s national identity. Dr Faris Yothasamuth is a lecturer at the Department of Literature, Kasetsart University, Thailand. He received PhD in International Comparative Literature and Translation Studies from The University of Sydney in 2021. Faris’s research and teaching expertise is Thai literature. H

In this episode of New Books in Southeast Asian Studies we travel with Craig J. Reynolds to the mid-south of Thailand in the first half of the twentieth century, where we meet with a legendary policeman who trained in martial arts and the occult so as to protect himself in mortal combat with dangerous foes. That policeman was Butr Pantharak, also known as Khun Phan. Though he already has quite a number of biographers in Thai, Reynolds’ Power, Protection and Magic in Thailand: The Cosmos of a Southern Policeman (ANU Press 2019) is the first book to tell the story of Khun Phan’s life and times for English-language readers. It is available for free download from the ANU Press website, where it is accompanied by a series of beautiful videos that build on the contents of each of its chapters, the making of which we discuss in this episode. Thai-language readers might also be interested in Craig Reynold’s new collection of essays, จดหมายจากสุดขอบโลก คิดคำนึงถึงอดีตในปัจจุบัน (Letters from the Edge of the World: Thi

Amidst accelerating environmental change and intense urbanisation, there is growing enthusiasm for building sustainable and ‘natural’ cities. Yet, when a flourishing eco-futuristic urban imaginary is enacted, it is often driven by a specific version of sustainability that is tied to high-tech futurism and persistent economic growth. In a Southeast Asian context, no city or country better encapsulates this than Singapore. But the pursuit of a singular narrative of progress has very specific consequences, particularly when that progress benefits some but not all beings. In this episode, Dr Natali Pearson is joined by Dr Jamie Wang to shed more light on the implications of Singapore’s growth fetish, and its implications for humans and non-humans. About Jamie Wang: Dr Jamie Wang is a Sydney Southeast Asia Centre Writing Fellow, a research affiliate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, and an editor of the journal Feminist Review. She has a PhD in Environmental Humanities a

Why has Myanmar experienced so many massive street protests recent years? How can we go about studying these sorts of mass demonstrations? What kinds of roles do bystanders perform in these protest movements? Have the protests since February 2021 been significantly different from earlier movements such as those of 1988 or 2007? And how are the most recent protests related to developments elsewhere in the region, including Hong Kong and Thailand? Mai Van Tran, a newly appointed postdoctoral researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) and the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, discusses her 2020 Cornell University PhD dissertation on Myanmar protests in this conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies a

For many people Cambodia’s modern history is overshadowed by the devastation and horror of the Khmer Rouge era between 1975 and 1979. Yet arguably the period since the fall of the Khmer Rouge has been much more significant in shaping the Cambodia of today. Perhaps more than any other Southeast Asian country Cambodia’s political leaders have had to deal with much more powerful outsiders: France, Vietnam, Thailand, the US, China, and the “international community”. No-one has been more adept at playing this political game than Cambodia’s remarkable prime minister, Hun Sen, now Southeast Asia’s longest serving political leader. Despite the international community’s best efforts since the early 1990s to fashion Cambodia into a model liberal democracy, Hun Sen and the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have eliminated all opposition to create a highly authoritarian state. Yet at the same time, and despite huge disparities in wealth, Cambodia is arguably more stable and prosperous than at any time in its traumatic moder

Ever tried to cross the road in Hanoi? There’s no point in waiting for a gap. Close your eyes and start walking: the traffic will magically weave around you. While Vietnamese cities were once dominated by bicycles and pedestrians, the growth in motorized mobility over the past decades have been astounding. The speed with which Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have changed into hostile environments for pedestrians and cyclist is quite remarkable. Yet in mobility terms Vietnamese urban transport somehow works, largely thanks to the continuing dominance of motorbikes. In this episode, Hue-Tam Jamme and Arve Hansen discuss motorbike madness in Vietnam, and what we can learn from the combination of vibrant street life and relatively efficient transport of millions of people on two wheels. Hue-Tam Jamme is an assistant professor at Arizona Sate University. She studies urbanisms in transition from a comparative perspective, using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, focusing on the lived experience of societal

From mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue to chronic bacterial infections such as yaws, Southeast Asia is home to a wide range of tropical diseases. For a long time, the arrival in the region of these and other dangerous tropical diseases was believed to be connected to the introduction of agriculture. But how long have these diseases really been around for? How are they connected to the region’s fluctuating social and environmental conditions? And how have they impacted the human populations of Southeast Asia over time? Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, bioarchaeologist Dr Melandri Vlok sheds light on the complex science of paleoepidemiology and its use of advanced analytical practices such as DNA ancestry, skeletal studies, and teeth calculus to uncover ancient stories of illness and disease. She explains that far from being mere remnants of the past, archaeological human remains can help us understand the evolution and spread of pathogens, and inform strategies to curb the spread of

What can years of ethnographic engagement with rural Indonesia teach us about capitalism, development, and resistance? On this episode of Ethnographic Marginalia, our guest is Dr. Tania Li, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Tania tells us about three decades of research on development programs, local activism, and class formation in rural Indonesia. She talks about her own frustrations as a development practitioner led her to study development programs for the book The Will to Improve. She then describes how research over 20 years on how families’ lives changed with the introduction of capitalist relations in rural Indonesian highlands led to her next book, Land’s End. Finally, she explains the collaborative methodology behind her new book Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation in Indonesia's Oil Palm Zone (Duke UP, 2021), co-authored with Pujo Semedi. She talks about the insights that emerged from their different perspectives and positionality, how they used the project to inspire a whol

Mainland Southeast Asia is one of the most fascinating and complex cultural and linguistic areas in the world. This book provides a rich and comprehensive survey of the history and core systems and subsystems of the languages of this fascinating region. Drawing on his depth of expertise in mainland Southeast Asia, Enfield includes more than a thousand data examples from over a hundred languages from Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, bringing together a wealth of data and analysis that has not previously been available in one place. Chapters cover the many ways in which these languages both resemble each other, and differ from each other, and the diversity of the area's languages is highlighted, with a special emphasis on minority languages, which outnumber the national languages by nearly a hundred to one. The result is an authoritative treatment of a fascinating and important linguistic area. Like this interview? If so, you might also be interested in: Anjalee Cohen, Youth Cul

Does ‘citizenship’ exist in a socialist or communist context? If it does, what would this mean in the case of Vietnam? To what extent do the Vietnamese state and Vietnamese citizens perceive citizenship differently? And how are those differences negotiated? Why does the wave of recent popular protests in neighbouring countries concern the Vietnamese government? Two lecturers from the University of Passau, Mirjam Le and Franziska Nicolaisen, share and discuss with Linh Phương Lê their findings on these issues. Mirjam Le is a lecturer and PhD researcher in Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Passau, Germany. Her thesis focuses on small town urbanization and the production of urban space in Vietnam. Her research interests involve urbanization and state-society relations in Vietnam, especially processes of self-organization and citizenship. Franziska S. Nicolaisen is a lecturer and research assistant for the chair of Development Economics at the University of Passau in Germany. Her work focuses on sustai