New Books in Southeast Asian Studies

In March of 2022 the U.S. government announced its determination that genocide was committed by the Myanmar military against Rohingya communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in 2017. What will this mean for the roughly one million Rohingya refugees living in neighboring countries, for Rohingya IDPs in Rakhine State, and for post-coup Myanmar? In this episode Terese Gagnon speaks with Kyaw Zeyar Win about this long-awaited determination. In this conversation we hear from Zeyar about the violent origins of the Rohingya genocide, rooted in the long history of securitization of Rohingya in Myanmar. Terese and Zeyar discuss the possible implications of the genocide determination for Rohingya both within and outside of post-coup Myanmar.Kyaw Zeyar Win is a Project Coordinator at the International Republican Institute in Washington D.C. He is an expert in politics, international relations, and human rights with a focus on Myanmar. He holds a master’s in international relations from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University where he was an Open Society Fellow. He has previously worked at organizations including Voice of America and Amnesty International. He is author of the chapter “Securitization of the Rohingya in Myanmar” from the book Myanmar Transformed? People, Places and Politics.Terese Gagnon is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at University of Copenhagen in the "The Politics of Climate and Sustainability in Asia”. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Syracuse University. Her dissertation is about Karen food, seed, and political sovereignty across landscapes of home and exile.Links to related podcasts:https://nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast/podcasts/karen_sanctuaries/https://nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast/podcasts/the-politics-of-protest-in-myanmar/https://nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast/podcasts/what-remains-textiles-from-tuol-sleng/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 about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcastSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

The Vietnamese victory over the French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina, is one of the most famous events in the history of anticolonialism. How were the Vietnamese communists able to achieve this remarkable victory over a much more powerful colonial force? This is the question Chris Goscha seeks to answer in his new book, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam (Princeton UP, 2022). In doing so, Goscha re-enters the vexed debate about the relative importance of nationalism and communism in Vietnam’s struggle against foreign powers. And he puts forward a compelling argument about the importance of “war communism” to the Vietnamese victory over the French.Chris Goscha is Professor of History and International Relations at the University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada, and a prize-winning author of works on the modern history of Vietnam.Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: p.jory@uq.edu.au.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

What explains the uneven meatification of diets in three of Asia’s core ‘emerging economies’? How and why is meat consumption changing today, and what role have American fast-food chains played? To discuss these questions and more, Helene Ramnæs, coordinator for the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies, is joined by Marius Korsnes, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Arve Hansen.Asian diets include considerably more meat now than in the recent past, but meat is a contested issue. China and Vietnam have experienced some of the world’s most dramatic meat booms but vegetarianism increases and concerns for unsafe production methods and negative health effects have made people cautious about the meat they eat. While India defies global meat trends, contemporary India is not as vegetarian as it claims, and a large beef sector exists in an uneasy relationship with Modi’s hindu-nationalist regime.Marius Korsnes specialises in Science and Technology Studies at the Department for Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His work focuses on sustainable consumption and production and he is PI of the ERC project: “A Middle Way? Probing Sufficiency through Meat and Milk in China”Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a social anthropologist working on social movements and the political economy of development in India. In addition to working and teaching at the University of Oslo, he also leads the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies with Arve Hansen.Arve Hansen is a human geographer at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo, teaching and researching consumption and sustainability, and with a particular interest in meat and meat avoidance. He also leads the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies with Kenneth Bo Nielsen.Karen Lykke Syse and Arve Hansen: Changing Meat Cultures Food Practices, Global Capitalism, and the Consumption of AnimalsThe 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 about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcastSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

The phenomenon of “war brides” from Japan moving to the West has been quite widely discussed, but this book tells the stories of women whose lives followed a rather different path after they married foreign occupiers. During Okinawa’s Occupation by the Allies from 1945 to 1972, many Okinawan women met and had relationships with non-Western men who were stationed in Okinawa as soldiers and base employees. Most of these men were from the Philippines.In Okinawan Women's Stories of Migration: From War Brides to Issei (Routledge, 2022), Zulueta explores the journeys of these women to their husbands’ homeland, their acculturation to their adopted land, and their return to their native Okinawa in their late adult years. Utilizing a life-course approach, she examines how these women crafted their own identities as first-generation migrants or “Issei” in both the country of migration and their natal homeland, their re-integration to Okinawan society, and the role of religion in this regard, as well as their thoughts on end-of-life as returnees.This book will be of interest to scholars looking at gender and migration, cross-cultural marriages, aging and migration, as well as those interested in East Asia, particularly Japan/Okinawa.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

We are all familiar with the spread of disinformation on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. But just when we thought we’d seen the worst of it, along comes TikTok. What started out as an app for dance challenges and musical duets has, in recent times, emerged as one of the most concerning tools for amplifying political propaganda and lies. What does this mean in a country like the Philippines, where there are more than 89 million social media users?Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Assistant Professor Maria Elize Mendoza analyses the influential role of social media in Philippine political affairs, revealing intricate webs of disinformation, propaganda, and citizen mobilisation, with colossal political ramifications.About Maria Elize Mendoza:Maria Elize H. Mendoza is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of the Philippines Diliman. She obtained her BA (magna cum laude) and MA degrees in Political Science under the BA-MA (Honours) Program of the Department of Political Science, University of the Philippines Diliman. She teaches courses on Philippine politics and social, economic, and political thought. Her research interests include Philippine local politics, the politics of education, and the relationship between social media and political participation.For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature (Princeton UP, 2022), Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and the political police to influence writers. In response, many writers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean—such as Chinua Achebe, Mulk Raj Anand, Eileen Chang, C.L.R. James, Alex La Guma, Doris Lessing, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka—carved out a vibrant conceptual space of aesthetic nonalignment, imagining a different and freer future for their work.Kalliney looks at how the United States and the Soviet Union, in an effort to court writers, funded international conferences, arts centers, book and magazine publishing, literary prizes, and radio programming. International spy networks, however, subjected these same writers to surveillance and intimidation by tracking their movements, tapping their phones, reading their mail, and censoring or banning their work. Writers from the global south also suffered travel restrictions, deportations, imprisonment, and even death at the hands of government agents. Although conventional wisdom suggests that cold war pressures stunted the development of postcolonial literature, Kalliney’s extensive archival research shows that evenly balanced superpower competition allowed savvy writers to accept patronage without pledging loyalty to specific political blocs. Likewise, writers exploited rivalries and the emerging discourse of human rights to contest the attentions of the political police.A revisionist account of superpower involvement in literature, The Aesthetic Cold War considers how politics shaped literary production in the twentieth century.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Tanya Jakimow's book Susceptibility in Development: Micropolitics of Local Development in India and Indonesia (Oxford UP, 2020) offers a novel approach to understanding power in development through theories of affect and emotion. Development agents - people tasked with designing or delivering development - are susceptible to being affected in ways that may derail or threaten their 'sense of self'. This susceptibility is in direct relation to the capacity of others to engender feelings in development agents: an overlooked form of power. Susceptibility in Development proposes a new analytical framework to enable new readings of power relations and their consequences for development. Susceptibility in Development offers a comparative ethnography of two types of local development agents: volunteers in a community development program in Medan, Indonesia, and women municipal councillors in Dehradun, India. Ethnographic accounts that are attentive to the emotions and affects engendered in encounters between individuals provide a fresh reading of the relations shaping local development. Local development agents may be more 'susceptible' than workers and volunteers from the global North, yet the capacity/susceptibility to affect/be affected orders relations and shapes outcomes of development more broadly. In theorising from the local, Susceptibility in Development offers fresh insights into power dynamics in development.Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Nicole Curato, Democracy in a Time of Misery: From Spectacular Tragedies to Deliberative Action Edward Aspinall and Ward Berenschot, Democracy for Sale: Elections, Clientelism, and the State in Indonesia Professor Michele Ford is the Director of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, a university-wide multidisciplinary center at the University of Sydney, Australia.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Can spiritually and religiously inspired environmental movements in Asia help reach the global goal of environmental sustainability? This question lies at the heart of the research project “Transcendence and Sustainability: Asian Visions with Global Promise” that we focus on in this episode. Also known as TRANSSUSTAIN, the project builds on the observation that scholars, activists, and even politicians in many Asian countries have found inspiration in traditional knowledge and in the premodern texts and practices of, for instance, Daoist, Buddhist, Hindu, and Confucian traditions to envision more ecologically sustainable futures. Exploring the mobilization and recalibration of such traditional Asian religio-philosophical ideas in response to the global environmental crisis, the project seeks to assess the potential of Asian environmental movements for helping us build sustainable global futures.Mette Halskov Hansen is professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo.Amita Baviskar is professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University.Lu Chen is a Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo.Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.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 about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

To Remain Myself: The History of Onghokham (ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series / NUS Press, 2022) is a particularly vivid biography of a remarkable individual, an Indonesian historian and public intellectual who was both a public figure and a multi-minority member, being Dutch educated, Indonesian Chinese, gay, alcoholic, irreligious and hedonist, in a conservative society. This is the first Indonesian biography where the interior life is closely recorded: the fears, doubts, confusions; the issues of sexuality, the mental breakdown, the jailing, the later success, joys and celebrity, as a historian, public intellectual and famous cook.This biography breaks out of the Indonesian Chinese category. It is primarily an Indonesian story. In its early chapters this biography reveals much about the ‘sugar king’ Chinese aristocracy of Indonesia, from the inside. In its later chapters this book shows much about the development of Indonesians writing their own post-colonial history, and the intellectual influences on this writing.Onghokham was a senior public intellectual with over 300 writings over 50 years, containing original insights into many varied Indonesian topics, including colonial history and its effects on modern politics and society; the Indonesian Chinese; ‘outsiders’ -- marginal people; the jago or brigand as people’s champion; sexuality in Indonesia past and present; food; the Oedipus complex; painting; traditional Javanese beliefs from the palace to the peasant.Like this interview? If so, you might also be interested in: Elisabeth Kramer, The Candidate's Dilemma: Anticorruptionism and Money Politics in Indonesian Election Campaigns Edward Aspinall and Ward Berenschot, Democracy for Sale: Elections, Clientelism, and the State in Indonesia Professor Michele Ford is the Director of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, a university-wide multidisciplinary center at the University of Sydney, Australia.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Despite decades of research into the historic settlements of Mainland Southeast Asia, our understanding of the region’s long-term settlement history remains incomplete. We know, for example, that mainland Southeast Asia was home to the world’s most extensive pre-industrial low-density urban complex at the site of Greater Angkor in Cambodia – but we don’t know how the site, and its low-density configuration, fits within the broader settlement history of the region. Yet understanding these settlement histories is important not only for understanding what happened in the past, but also for how we interpret settlement patterns developing across the region today. Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Dr Ben Dharmendra takes us on a journey spanning millenia to explore the long-term history of settlement development across Mainland Southeast Asia.About Ben Dharmendra:Ben Dharmendra recently completed his PhD at the University of Sydney. His research is focused on how human settlements develop through time and the effects they create. His PhD project involved reconstructing the long-term history of Mainland Southeast Asian settlements and how this history influenced the development of the region from around 500BCE to 1900CE.For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies