New Books in Southeast Asian Studies

Financial inclusion has been one of the most prominent issues on the international development agenda in recent years, as access to payments, remittances, credit, savings and insurance services have been shown to improve economic resilience and livelihoods. While bank account access remains low in many developing countries, widespread access to mobile phones is providing a platform to push financial access even into remote areas. The Covid-19 pandemic has only reinforced the importance of digital finance, which provides a safe, socially-distanced means to transact, including for distribution of social assistance transfers. In this episode, Dr Russell Toth spoke to Dr Thushara Dibley about his work on digital finance schemes and how owning a mobile phone can help lift people out of poverty in Myanmar.Russell Toth is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney. He is a development microeconomist, focusing on the development of the private sector in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, on topics such as financial systems, digitisation, agricultural value chains, and small and medium enterprises. His research often involves partnering with private and public sector organisations to evaluate programs intended to improve private sector development outcomes. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.You can follow Russell on Twitter @russell_toth.For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website here.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

We are familiar with the history of the division of Vietnam in 1954 into two states, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the Republic of Vietnam in the south. What started out essentially as a civil war turned into one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Cold War. Much of the scholarly, and indeed popular interest in the history of this period has been about the bitter and divisive American experience of the war. But beyond the military conflict we are much less familiar with the everyday live of the youth in the two opposing states. Olga Dror's Making Two Vietnams: War and Youth Identities, 1965-1975 (Cambridge UP, 2020) is a rich and fascinating study of how Vietnamese youth in the two states experienced this tumultuous period in very different ways. Dror also argues that much maligned South Vietnam deserves fairer treatment in the history of the Vietnam War.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

There are many Orientalist stereotypes about Thailand. Known as the “Land of Smiles” to foreign tourists, they often comment on the calm and pleasant demeanor of a people seemingly averse to conflict. However, these are superficial remarks coming from observers who fail to understand the country’s language, culture, and deep social, cultural, and political tensions. Since the bloodless end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, there have been a dozen successful coups, a few more unsuccessful efforts, and the spilling of blood in several massacres. From the Cold War to well into the 21st century, Thailand has wavered between democracy and military rule, with the Chakri Dynasty’s kings ruling over the political pendulum. Pavin Chachavalpongpun’s edited volume Coup King Crisis: A Critical Interregnum in Thailand out in 2021 with Yale University Southeast Asia Studies is a collection of essays on the 2014 coup. The authors explore the complex relationship between the monarchy, the military, and democracy. The volume does an excellent job of giving larger context to Thai politics.Dr. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a native of Bangkok, studied at Chulalongkorn University before earning his doctorate at SOAS. Before becoming an academic and an activist, he served as a diplomat in the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 13 years. He is currently an Associate Professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, where he edits the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asian Studies. Pavin Chachavalpongpun is arguably the most internationally prominent Thai dissident, penning critiques of the Thai junta for the world’s leading newspapers. He is the author or editor of a number of books on Thai politics.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

How do you hold a government accountable for crimes it refuses to acknowledge? Today's book, The International People's Tribunal for 1965 and the Indonesian Genocide (Routledge, 2019) emerges out of the International People's Tribunal for 1965. Rooted in a longer tradition of People's Tribunals, the IPT was an effort to remind civil society of the mass violence in Indonesia beginning in 1965 and to exert pressure on the Indonesian government and military to acknowledge the violence, hold perpetrators accountable and provide redress for victims. Today's guests played a prominent role in organizing and supporting the IPT. Their book serves as something of a history of the IPT and a summary of the evidence provided. But it also serves as kind of survey of the field at a critical moment in the study of the violence.In the interview, we talk about the IPT and its origin, organization and outcomes. We also try to situate the IPT in the broader context of scholarship about mass violence in Indonesia. And we talk about the interesting role of academics as public intellectuals and activists.Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Reforms in Myanmar (formerly Burma) have eased restrictions on citizens' political activities. Yet for most Burmese, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung shows in Everyday Economic Survival in Myanmar (U Wisconsin Press, 2019), eking out a living from day to day leaves little time for civic engagement. Citizens have coped with extreme hardship through great resourcefulness. But by making bad situations more tolerable in the short term, these coping strategies may hinder the emergence of the democratic values needed to sustain the country's transition to a more open political environment. Thawnghmung conducted in-depth interviews and surveys of 372 individuals from all walks of life and across geographical locations in Myanmar between 2008 and 2015. To frame her analysis, she provides context from countries with comparable political and economic situations. Her findings will be welcomed by political scientists and policy analysts, as well by journalists and humanitarian activists looking for substantive, reliable information about everyday life in a country that remains largely in the shadows.Anyone interested in political economy, development, or culture in Myanmar or more generally will find Everyday Economic Survival in Myanmar an insightful and intellectually provocative read.John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Cambodia’s troubled history has often been depicted in terms of conflict, trauma and tussles between great powers. In Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories: Jarai and Other Lives in the Cambodian Highlands (U Washington Press, 2020), Jonathan Padwe assembles this history from narrative pieces by and of the Jarai, an ethnic minority living in the country’s highlands. Demonstrating how landscapes and social formations simultaneously changed each other, the book takes a reader through the various historical conjunctures - the Jarai’s agency in opening up pre-capitalist resources frontiers; the colonial state’s attempted rationalization of the landscape through rubber enterprises; trauma and displacement during the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge regime and re-diversification of the scarred land in recent years. In the process of accessing these histories, the book analyzes forest biota and agricultural practices, enabling a new approach to conceptualizing landscapes that melds representation, materiality and ecology.In this episode, we discuss how to approach ethnography in inaccessible places, conceptualizations of nature-culture, ecological de-diversification and re-diversification and how bombs could be remembered as flowers falling from the sky.Jonathan Padwe is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. His research interests center on social and environmental change in mainland Southeast Asian uplands, issues of equity and equality in development and indigenous identities.Faizah Zakaria is assistant professor of history at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. You can find her website at www.faizahzak.com or reach her on Twitter @laurelinarien.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Since 1990 public political criticism has evolved into a prominent feature of Vietnam's political landscape. Over the last three decades, such criticism has become widespread around four main clusters of issues: factory workers demanding better wages and living standards; villagers demonstrating and petitioning against corruption and land confiscations; citizens opposing China's encroachment into Vietnam and criticizing China-Vietnam relations; and dissidents objecting to the party-state regime and pressing for democratisation.In this episode of New Books in Southeast Asian Studies, Professor Michele Ford hosted Emeritus Professor Benedict Kerkvliet to discuss his book, Speaking Out in Vietnam: Public Political Criticism in a Communist Party–Ruled Nation (Cornell University Press, 2019). In his analysis of Communist Party–ruled Vietnam, Benedict Kerkvliet assesses the rise and diversity of these public displays of disagreement, showing that it has morphed from family whispers to large-scale use of electronic media, and argues that although we may think that the party-state represses public criticism, in fact Vietnamese authorities often tolerate and respond positively to such public and open protests.Benedict Kerkvliet is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University. Fascinated with how ordinary people deal with big pressures on their lives, Ben has emphasized research on agrarian politics in Southeast Asia. Closely related is his study of interactions between ordinary people and authorities or other elites. He is currently researching local reactions to major recent national policies in the Philippines and Vietnam.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

This edited volume is the first book-length study of Buddhist tourism in contemporary Asia in the English language. Featuring chapters from diverse contributors from religious studies, anthropology, and art history, Buddhist Tourism in Asia (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) explores themes of Buddhist imaginaries, place-making, secularization, and commodification in three parts. The first part, Buddhist Imaginaries and Place-Making features four interesting chapters on how Buddhism is marketed and promoted to domestic and international tourists, as well as how these imaginaries “sediments” over time. The chapters in Part II, Secularizing the Sacred, reveal interestingly that Buddhist tourism tends to create alliances with secular forces as strategies to promote their traditions and sacred sites. Part III of the volume shifts to discussions of commodification in Buddhism and its consequences. Here, contributors show that commodification is not necessarily at odds with Buddhism nor is it a new phenomenon. Covering a wide range of Buddhist sites across Asia and their multi-layered participants in Buddhist tourism, this book uses the unique lens of tourism to offer fresh perspectives on Buddhist spaces, identities, and practices.Courtney Bruntz is Assistant Professor, Philosophy & Religious Studies, at Doane UniversityBrooke Schedneck is Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, at Rhodes CollegeDaigengna Duoer is a PhD student at the Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation researches on transnational and transregional Buddhist networks connecting twentieth-century Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Republican China, Tibet, and the Japanese Empire.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State-Building Between China and Southeast Asia (Oxford UP, 2019) explains the variations in state building across the borderland area between China, Myanmar, and Thailand. It presents a comparative historical account of the state and nation-building processes in the ethnically diverse and geographically rugged borderland area where China meets Southeast Asia. It argues the failure of the Myanmar state to consolidate its control over its borderland area is partly due to the political and military meddling by its two more powerful neighbors during the Cold War. Furthermore, both China and Thailand, being more economically advanced than Myanmar, have exerted heavy economic influence on the borderland area at the cost of Myanmar’s economic sovereignty. The book provides a historical account of the borderland that traces the pattern of relations between valley states and upland people before the mid-twentieth century. Then it discusses the implications of the Chinese nationalist KMT troops in Burma and Thailand and Burmese and Thai communist insurgencies since the mid-1960s on attempts by the three states to consolidate their respective borderland areas. The book also portrays the dynamics of the borderland economy and the dominance of both China and Thailand on Myanmar’s borderland territory in the post-Cold War period. It further discusses the comparative nation-building processes among the three states and the implications for the ethnic minority groups in the borderland area and their national identity contestations. Finally, the book provides an updated account of the current ethnic conflicts along Myanmar’s restive borderland and its ongoing peace negotiation process.Enze Han is an Associate professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at University of Hong Kong.Victoria Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese literature and Global South studies.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Joko Widodo, or “Jokowi”, as he is popularly known, famously rose from a riverside shack to become president of Indonesia in 2014. In a country better known for decades of authoritarian rule, Jokowi’s story has captured the imagination of observers of Indonesia hopeful for the country’s full transition to democracy. Ben Bland’s Man of Contradiction: Joko Widodo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia (Penguin, 2021) is the first political biography of Indonesia’s president in the English language. His book goes behind this remarkable story to try to understand who Jokowi really is. He argues that the contradictions apparent in Jokowi the politician, reflect the deep contradictions of the Indonesia nation. Jokowi represents both the potential of Indonesia, as well as its limitations. 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