New Books in Southeast Asian Studies

Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia (University of California Press, 2021) (University of California Press, 2021) focuses on male and female Indians incarcerated in Southeast Asia for criminal and political offenses committed in colonial South Asia. From the seventeenth century onward, penal transportation was a key strategy of British imperial rule, exemplified by deportations first to the Americas and later to Australia. Case studies from the insular prisons of Bengkulu, Penang, and Singapore illuminate another carceral regime in the Indian Ocean World that brought South Asia and Southeast Asia together through a global system of forced migration and coerced labor. A major contribution to histories of crime and punishment, prisons, law, labor, transportation, migration, colonialism, and the Indian Ocean World, Empire of Convicts narrates the experiences of Indian bandwars (convicts) and shows how they exercised agency in difficult situations, fashioning their own worlds and even becoming “their own warders.” Anand A. Yang brings long journeys across kala pani (black waters) to life in a deeply researched and engrossing account that moves fluidly between local and global contexts.Anand A. Yang is the Walker Family Endowed Professor in History and Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington. His monographs include the books The Limited Raj: Agrarian Relations in Colonial India; Bazaar India: Peasants, Traders, Markets and the Colonial State in Gangetic Bihar; and the edited volumes Crime and Criminality in British India and Interactions: Transregional Perspectives on World History.Kelvin Ng hosted the episode. He is a Ph.D. student at Yale University, History Department. His research interests broadly lie in the history of imperialism and anti-imperialism in the early-twentieth-century Indian Ocean circuit.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

How can Sociology be nudged away from its traditional parochialism to embrace empirical work that focuses on the global south? Marco Garrido (assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago) and Victoria Reyes (assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside) are the editors of a recent special issue of Contexts magazine, New Ethnographies of the Global South, that brings together scholars doing fieldwork outside of the US and Europe. Marco and Victoria tell us about how they came to do ethnographic research on the Philippines and describe how the special issue emerged as part of a broader shift towards studying the Global South. We also talk with them about why and how there are pressures against overseas scholarship from within graduate programs and academic journals, how Global South ethnographers must translate their work for US audiences, and how younger scholars can pursue their interests while also positioning themselves for success.Victoria Reyes is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. Reyes studies culture, borders, and empire. Her work is driven by the question of how to understand territoriality in the 21stcentury. Her work has been published in Social Forces, Ethnography, Theory and Society, City & Community, Poetics, and International Journal of Comparative Sociology and she is the author of Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire.Marco Garrido is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Garrido's work has focused on the relationship between the urban poor and middle class in Manila as located in slums and upper- and middle-class enclaves. His work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Qualitative Sociology, and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and he is the author of The Patchwork City: Class, Space, and Politics in Metro Manila.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. Dr. 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

For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.For our fourth episode in this mini-series, Dr Thushara Dibley speaks with Dr Fiona Lee about a unique research project she's been managing on cultural archives in Malaysia, where her research partner is also the subject of her research.In the podcast, Fiona mentioned that the ad was published in the mid-20th century; however, the correct date is 1934, as can be seen on the Malaysia Design Archive website: https://www.malaysiadesignarchive.org/advertisement-tiger-beer/.Dr Fiona Lee is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney. She researches and teaches in the fields of postcolonial studies, 20th and 21st-century literature, and cultural studies. Her research explores the history of decolonisation and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, with a particular interest in Malaysia and Singapore, through the prisms of literature and the arts. She earned her PhD in English and a Women’s Studies Certificate at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2014. At CUNY, she taught literature and writing courses, as well as participated in various digital teaching and learning initiatives. From 2014-2016, she held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cultural Studies at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.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

Fleeting Agencies: A Social History of Indian Coolie Women in British Malaya (Cambridge UP, 2021) disrupts the male-dominated narratives by focusing on gendered patterns of migration and showing how South Asian women labour migrants engaged with the process of migration, interacted with other migrants and negotiated colonial laws. This is the first study of Indian coolie women in British Malaya to date. In exploring the politicization of labour migration trends and gender relations in the colonial plantation society in British Malaya, the author foregrounds how the migrant Indian 'coolie' women manipulated colonial legal and administrative perceptions of Indian women; their gender-prescriptive roles, relations within patriarchal marriage institutions, and even the emerging Indian national independence movement in India and Malaya. All this, to ensure their survival, escape from unfavourable relations and situations, and improve their lives. The book also introduces the concept of situational or fleeting agency, which contributes to further a nuanced understanding of agency in the lives of Indian coolie women.Arunima Datta is a historian of South and Southeast Asia and the British Empire. Her main area of research interest focuses on the transnational mobility of South Asians in the colonial period (nineteenth and twentieth century) across different parts of the British Empire. Much of Dr. Datta’s research has simultaneously also focused on themes of labor history, transnational Indian nationalism, women’s and gender history. In addition to Fleeting Agencies, she has also published a number of articles and chapters, concerning South Asian labor, migration and women’s histories. Her current research project is centered around the migration and mobility of Indian Travelling Ayahs (travelling nannies) across the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Dr. Datta also serves as a member of the editorial board for the journal Gender & History, Journal of Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and Asian Journal of Social Science Studies.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.In the third episode in this mini-series, Dr Thushara Dibley interviewed Associate Professor Jeffrey Neilson about a new collaborative project investigating sustainable agricultural production in Vietnam. He talks about the challenges of building relationships with partners you’ve never met before, beyond language barriers and closed international borders, and how this has had unexpectedly positive consequences for the project.Jeff's research focuses on economic geography, environmental governance and rural development in Southeast Asia, with specific area expertise on Indonesia. Jeff’s research interests are diverse and include issues of food security and food sovereignty, the global coffee industry, the global cocoa-chocolate industry, agrarian reform movements, sustainable livelihoods and alternative measures of well-being, agroecology, and environmental governance. He is currently leading a five-year research project examining the livelihood impacts of farmer engagement in value chain interventions across Indonesia. This research is contributing to cutting-edge international debates on the development effects of sustainability and certification programs, Geographical Indications and direct trade initiatives.Jeff is a fluent Indonesian language speaker and has conducted extended periods of ethnographic field research in the Toraja region of Sulawesi, where he pursues research in cultural change, landscape history, the ceremonial economy and oral poetic traditions.You can follow Jeffrey on Twitter @JeffreySydney.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

Angkarn Kallayanapong (1926-2012) was arguably Thailand’s most famous poet of the modern period. His career spanned the era from the 1940s to the 1980s when Thai society was fundamentally transformed by rapid economic development and the process of globalization. His poetry is a testament to the massive disruption, dislocation, and alienation caused by these changes, and a lament for cultural loss. As Arnika Fuhrmann argues in her new book, Teardrops of Time: Buddhist Aesthetics in the Poetry of Angkarn Kallayanapong (SUNY Press, 2020), Angkarn employed a distinctly Buddhist aesthetics to express these ideas. But Angkarn also has a claim to being a poet of global significance. The famous American “beat poet”, Allen Ginsberg - whose poetry was also influenced by Buddhism - once met Angkarn and translated and published three of his poems.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

For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.In the second episode in this mini-series, Dr Thushara Dibley interviewed Professor Michael Dibley about a collaborative project looking at food security and malnutrition in Myanmar - a country he had previously never worked in before, and where he had to rely on local partners to navigate an array of complex challenges.Michael Dibley is a Professor in Global Public Health Nutrition and an internationally renowned nutritional epidemiologist with major research outputs and translation over the past 30 years. Professor Dibley is Co-Director of the Global Health & Nutrition Research Collaboration (GHNRC) at the Sydney School of Public Health and the founding member of The South Asia Infant Feeding Research Network (SAIFRN). Professor Dibley’s contributions have illuminated the double burden of under and over-nutrition prevalent in many countries across the Asia-Pacific. He has conducted many large multi-centre trials and has in-depth knowledge of the conduct and analysis of large-scale community-based cluster RCTs. He has also directed research assessing the magnitude of childhood and adolescent obesity, micronutrient deficiencies in women and children, infant and young child feeding practices, and a wide range of associated environmental, social and behavioural risks factors and their effects on health in South and Southeast Asia and Africa.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 the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.In our first episode, Dr Thushara Dibley speaks with Associate Professor Jenny-Ann Toribio about a ten-year long research collaboration that she’s developed with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Timor-Leste to combat animal diseases.Jenny-Ann is Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the University of Sydney. Jenny-Ann has conducted extensive applied research focused on biosecurity, emergency animal diseases and zoonoses in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines and Timor-Leste. Recent research of note in Australia includes evaluation of avian influenza risk for commercial chicken farms in New South Wales and risk awareness and risk mitigation practices among horse owners in relation to Hendra virus. Further afield, she has led collaborative research in eastern Indonesia on the evaluation of the risk for highly pathogenic avian influenza and classical swine fever with poultry and pig movement respectively; in Timor Leste on smallholder pig production and health; and in Fiji on evaluation of zoonotic tuberculosis risk for dairy farmers.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

Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Duke University Press, 2018) presents a multi-species ethnography of orangutans and humans that probes the shared susceptibilities of both species in the face of future extinction. In a series of provocative chapters, the book interweaves intimate entanglements in the workings of an orangutan rehabilitation centre with reflection on the work of care that draws on queer theory and feminist conceptions of welfare. By centralizing such rehabilitation efforts, the book reveals the contradictions inherent in such a system. The practice of rehabilitation, it shows, is underpinned by violence. Parreñas demonstrates the colonial origins of such an approach to conservation biology and how care within enclosures traps both humans and endangered primates alike. As such, we should urgently question how we could divest ourselves from the need for security that is dependent on cruelty and seek instead a decolonial era of co-existence which welcomes and finds joy in our moments of brief, mutual vulnerability.In this conversation, we discuss models of orangutan care, coerced copulations, the concept of “arrested autonomy” and how we as a species could love better.Juno Salazar Parreñas is an assistant professor at the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University. Her research interests centre on human-animal relations and the institution of environmental justice. This book received the 2019 Michelle Z. Rosaldo Prize, biennially awarded by the Association for Feminist Anthropology for a first book as well as honourable mentions for the 2019 New Millennium Prize, the 2019 Diana Forsythe Prize and the 2020 Harry Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies.For more on orangutans in Borneo, check out the following:SSEAC Interview with conservation scholar Dr. June Rubis here.NBN Interview with historian Prof. Robert Cribb here.Faizah Zakaria is an assistant professor of Southeast Asian history at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. You can find her website at www.faizahzak.com or Twitter @laurelinarien.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

What exactly is an archive? Who and what are involved in the making and naming of memory projects as archives? What kinds of stories become told through archives, and what stories are muted?Dr Beth Yahp chats with Dr Thushara Dibley about her work with Malaysia Design Archive, exploring the inner workings of the archive-making process, and inviting us to pay closer attention to the everyday stories of objects around us. This conversation is based on Beth’s participation in a series of Living Archives workshops developed in collaboration with Dr Fiona Lee from the Department of English and Ezrena Marwan and jac sm kee from Malaysia Design Archive.Originally from Malaysia, Beth Yahp is an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction, whose work has been published in Australia and internationally. Her novel The Crocodile Fury was translated into several languages and her libretto, Moon Spirit Feasting, for composer Liza Lim, won the APRA Award for Best Classical Composition in 2003. Beth was the presenter of ‘Elsewhere’, a program for travellers on ABC Radio National (2010-2011). Her latest publication is a collection of short stories, The Red Pearl and Other Stories (Vagabond Press, 2017). Her travel memoir Eat First, Talk Later (Penguin Random House, 2015) was shortlisted for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Award for Literature (Non-Fiction). Beth teaches Creative Writing at the University of Sydney.Find out more about Malaysia Design Archive on their website: www.malaysiadesignarchive.org/For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: sydney.edu.au/sseac.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies