New Books in Southeast Asian Studies

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 neglect of British colonial atrocities within the historiography of colonial violence, this work demonstrates the ways in which Britain was just as willing and able as other European Empires to resort to extreme measures in the face of indigenous resistance or threats to the British imperial project.Siddharth Sridhar is a fourth year PhD Candidate (ABD) in History at the University of Toronto.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

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 for Linus, an Italian comics magazine.Claudio and Sara join us to talk about The King of Bangkok, where they cover Nok’s story, and what it tells us about Thailand, Bangkok, and the country’s urban-rural divide. They also talk about the process of making the book itself: a graphic novel, based on a decade of anthropological research.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The King of Bangkok. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

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. His research interests include literature and history, and translation in Thailand’s (semi)colonial contexts. Faris’s current research focuses on representations of the Orient in Western popular novels that were translated into Thai during the colonial era.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

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: Thinking of the Past in the Present, Sayam Press, 2022), which we talk about at the end of the interview.Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Thongchai Winichakul, Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok Sam van Schaik, Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment through the Ages Nick Cheesman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University. He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series and contributes to the New Books in Southeast Asian Studies channel on the New Books Network.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

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 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

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 and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersections of environmental humanities, urban geography, more-than-human studies and sustainable development in the context of planetary urbanism, climate change and environmental injustice. Jamie’s recent project ‘Reimagining the More-than-Human cities, stories of Singapore’ has explored the multifaceted pressing urban environmental issues, from urban greenery to housing development projects, transportation, water infrastructure, and urban agriculture, with a geographic focus in Singapore. It asks how we might develop ways of re-thinking, re-seeing and re-storying cities through foregrounding their more-than-human worlds. Jamie is also a writer and poet.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

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 modern history. Sebastian Strangio has documented this remarkable story in his book, Cambodia: From Pol Pot to Hun Sen and Beyond (Yale University Press, 2020).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

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 transformationsArve Hansen is a researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo.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

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 infectious diseases in human populations.About Melandri Vlok:Dr Melandri Vlok is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Melandri specialises in palaeopathology/ bioarchaeology and researches the implications for migration and trade on the presence of infectious and nutritional diseases in past populations in Asia. Melandri's work, funded by grant bodies including National Geographic and the Royal Society of New Zealand, has involved the analysis of human skeletal remains from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand and the Philippines. She is also involved with repatriation efforts focused on returning Māori and Moriori ancestral remains to iwi and imi (tribes) in New Zealand.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

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 whole generation of Indonesian anthropologists, and their joint efforts to avoid a colonial dynamic in their writing process.Alex Diamond is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Texas, Austin. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies