New Books In 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

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

In 2021, a team of divers led by renowned maritime archaeologist Dr Michael Flecker and sponsored by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute surveyed two historic shipwrecks discovered in the Singapore Strait, working for several months to bring their submerged cargos to the surface. Chinese trade ceramics found in these cargos date their demise to the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries – pivotal moments in the history of the globe-spanning China Trade. The most intriguing aspect of this salvage operation, however, is the discovery in the remains of the older vessel of the most substantial cargo of Yuan-dynasty blue-and-white porcelain yet found in Southeast Asian waters. Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Dr Alex Burchmore argues that these discoveries provide valuable insights into the complex interactions between China and Southeast Asia, allowing us to reposition Southeast Asia at the centre of historic trade narratives. Through the international trade of Chinese ceramics, Dr Burchmore invites us to rei

Quyền Văn Minh (b. 1954) is not only a jazz saxophonist and lecturer at the prestigious Vietnam National Academy of Music, but he is also one of the most preeminent jazz musicians in Vietnam. Considered a pioneer in the country, Minh is often publicly recognized as the “godfather of Vietnamese jazz.” Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam: Quyền Văn Minh and Jazz in Hà Nội (UP of Mississippi, 2021) tells the story of the music as it intertwined with Minh’s own narrative. Stan BH Tan-Tangbau details Minh’s life story, telling how Minh pioneered jazz as an original genre even while navigating the trials and tribulations of a fervent socialist revolution, of the ideological battle that was the Cold War, of Vietnam’s war against the United States, and of the political changes during the Đổi Mới period between the mid-1980s and the 1990s. Minh worked tirelessly and delivered two breakthrough solo recitals in 1988 and 1989, marking the first time jazz was performed in the public sphere in the socialist state. To gain ja

Why did leading historians in both Indonesia and the Philippines become involved in projects to write national histories during the 1970s? How far were these projects essentially political undertakings to legitimate the Suharto and Marcos regimes respectively? In conversation with Duncan McCargo, Rommel Curaming discusses how he managed to interview key protagonists behind these controversial history-writing endeavors, many of whom were initially rather reluctant to talk about their roles. Examining two state-sponsored history writing projects in Indonesia and the Philippines in the 1970s, Power and Knowledge in Southeast Asia: State and Scholars in Indonesia and the Philippines (Routledge, 2019) illuminates the contents and contexts of the two projects and, more importantly, provides a nuanced characterization of the relationship between embodiments of power (state, dictators, government officials) and knowledge (intellectuals, historians, history). Known respectively as Sejarah Nasional Indonesia (SNI) and

Aro Velmet's Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Oxford UP, 2020) is a complex history of the Pasteur Institutes, a network of scientific laboratories established in France and throughout the French empire, beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The book examines the crucial roles Pastorians and Pasteurization played in the imperial project in and between different locations, particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa. Participating in the "civilizing mission," helping to establish and maintain industrial monopolies, and the control of colonial bodies through public health regulation and disease management, the institutes had a tremendous political impact.   Attentive to the experiences and perspectives of the Vietnamese and African peoples in the sites the book focuses on, Pasteur's Empire examines a range of scientific responses and measures, from the study and containment of infectious and epidemic disease to the microbiological aspects of industry. The bo

In Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition across Southeast Asia (Princeton University Press, 2020) Diana Kim situates the regulation of vice at the heart of colonial state building. Through a layered comparison of opium prohibition in Burma, Malaya and Vietnam she shows how petty bureaucrats told stories to one another about opium that incrementally transformed into official problems, which those same bureaucrats and their successors had to solve. Prohibition did not come through grand decisions and decisive moments in old European metropoles and new international organizations so much as it did via accumulated observations and interpretations by thousands of “bad ethnographers” in the British and French imperial civil services. Empires of Vice won the Giovanni Sartori Best Book Award, Qualitative Methods Section of the American Political Science Association, and got honourable mentions from the committees for the Charles Taylor Book Award, Interpretive Methodologies and Methods section of APSA, and t

One of the first members of Albert Samaha’s family introduced in his memoir Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes (Riverhead Books, 2021) is his uncle Spanky: a baggage handler in San Francisco’s airport. Spanky emigrated to the United States from his home country, the Philippines, where he lived a very different life as a rockstar: one of the founding members of VST & Co., one of the country’s most famous bands. That’s merely one of the family members Albert Samaha profiles in Concepcion which traces the lives of generations of Filipinos, and Filipino-Americans, trying to find a better life for themselves and navigating the ups-and-downs of American society and politics. Albert Samaha is an investigative journalist and inequality editor at BuzzFeed News whose work has appeared in The New York Times, the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly, and the Riverfront Times, among other outlets. A Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient, he is also the author of Never Ran, Never Will: Boyhood and F

Today, oral histories of everyday Singaporeans are more widely circulated in the nation’s mediascape than ever before. At first glance, storytelling in Singapore appears to have lost its monolithic quality, becoming diffuse and diversified. But as Dr Cheng Nien Yuan argues, Singapore has become a Storytelling State, marketing bite-sized pieces of consumable lives as authentic windows to the private self. The result is the use of personal stories within the neoliberal public sphere, mirroring a growing global phenomenon. To tell this story, Dr Natali Pearson is joined by Dr Cheng Nien Yuan to discuss her award-winning research that charts Singapore’s development into a storytelling state over the last decade. About Cheng Nien Yuan: Cheng Nien Yuan is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney’s School of Literature, Art and Media, as well as the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Her research centres around the politics and poetics of storytelling in Singapore. She obtained her PhD in Theatre and Performance

Raj Balkaran has a candid conversation with seasoned scholar Dr. Vasudha Narayanan about her academic journey, the current state of Hindu Studies and her ground-breaking work on Hindu temples and traditions in Cambodia. Dr. Narayanan is Distinguished Professor, Department of Religion, at the University of Florida, Director for the Centre for the Study of Hinduism and former President of the American Academy of Religion. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music during US Colonization of the Philippines published in 2021 by the University Press of Mississippi by Mary Talusan focuses on the Philippine Constabulary band, a military band organized in 1902 that served the colonial government in the Philippines until World War II. Founded and led for most of its history by Walter Loving, a Black soldier in the American military, the band visited the United States four times between 1904 and 1939 and it is these visits that Talusan examines in Instruments of Empire. Listening with what Talusan calls the imperial ear, American commentators understood the group’s command of the standard band repertory of the period not as a result of the Filipino musician’s training and skill, but as evidence of their so-called natural musical ability which had been tamed by the allegedly civilizing influence of American colonial rule. Tracing the band’s reception over time, Talusan analyzes the cultural, poli

Why was there a large flow of overseas remittances into Vietnam after 1975, and how were they channelled? Why was there so little public discussion of the financial role played by the Vietnamese diaspora? What was the Vietnamese state’s attitude towards these remittances, and how much did they help transform the Vietnamese economy? In this podcast, Linh Phương Lê talks to Hoàng Minh Vũ, a diplomatic historian of twentieth-century Vietnam and the Asia-Pacific, about the significance of remittances from the Vietnamese overseas community in reducing hyperinflation and stabilising the national economy during after the Đổi Mới period. This episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast offers a snapshot of Vietnam’s recent economic history that has far-reaching implications. Hoàng Minh Vũ completed his PhD on the Third Indochina War at Cornell in 2020. He is currently a faculty member in history at Fulbright University in Vietnam – see here for his profile and recent publications: https://fulbright.edu.vn/our-team/vu-minh-hoa

December 2021 marks the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the Second World War. In fact, this interview was recorded on December 12th: the 80th anniversary of Japanese troops landing on the Philippine island of Luzon. That invasion marked the four-year war over the Philippines: the surrender of American forces on May 8th, 1942; the invasion of Leyte by MacArthur on October 20th, 1944; and the surrender of Japan on August 15th, 1945. But what happens in between these major dates? How did Filipinos live their lives under the occupation—and how did some choose to fight back? What did resistance, whether carried out by Americans who stayed behind, or Filipinos seizing their country’s future for themselves, look like? War and Resistance in the Philippines, 1942–1944 (Naval Institute Press: 2021) by James Kelly Morningstar is one of the first attempts to repair our understanding of the war in the Philippines, showing how American, Filipino and Japanese actions influenced each other. James

The United States is the world's largest donor of foreign aid, and in this profound analysis, Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr. demonstrates the links between human rights protections and the provision of US strategic aid in recipient countries. In Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2021), Professor Regilme puts forward a "theory of interest convergence" which draws out the way that shared strategic interests between donor and recipient countries have the power to strengthen the legitimacy of domestic recipient governments, but not necessarily in ways that protect physical integrity rights of citizens. Presenting two case studies from The Phillipines and Thailand during the post-cold-war period and also during the global war on terror periods, the book provides a richly researched, intricate understanding of the way that authoritarian governments have continued to benefit from the provision of US aid, while not necessarily i

In April 2021, three months into Myanmar’s most recent and increasingly more violent coup d’état, local residents managed to obstruct the junta by refusing to cooperate with military appointed officials. The junta had attempted to replace all local level administrators with those loyal to the military. But in one town in Shan State, the junta-appointed administrators were socially ostracized by the community to the point of resigning. With no one daring to take their place, every ward administrator position in town went unfilled. Across the country, Myanmar residents supported each other, and striking civil servants, by setting up donations of basic foodstuffs such as rice, oil, and onions. In this episode, Dr Natali Pearson is joined by Dr Jayde Lin Roberts to discuss how these locally initiated direct actions are part and parcel of the ordinary practices of everyday life in Myanmar. In providing a space for informal, intimate, and relational economies, nalehmu not only fosters community-building, says Dr Ro

Investigating the communicative practices of indigenous Santali speakers in eastern India, this book examines the overlooked role of script in regional movements for autonomy to provide one of the first comprehensive theoretical and ethnographical accounts of 'graphic politics'. Based on extensive fieldwork in the villages of southwestern West Bengal, Nishaant Choksi explores the deployment of Santali scripts, including a newly created script called Ol Chiki, in Bengali-dominated local markets, the education system and in the circulation of print media. He shows how manipulating the linguistic landscape and challenging the idea of a vernacular enables Santali speakers to delineate their own political domains and scale their language on local, regional and national levels. In doing so, they contest Bengali-speaking upper castes' hegemony over public spaces and institutions, as well as the administrative demarcations of the contemporary Indian nation-state. Combining semiotic theory with ethnographically ground

COP26 was billed as the make or break event in the fight against climate change. In conversation with Quynh Le Vo, Sharon Seah, coordinator of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme, discusses Southeast Asian countries’ key priorities going into the conference and the commitments they made in Glasgow, including climate finance, exit from coal and ending deforestation. She also reveals some insights from the annual Southeast Asia Climate Survey reports, such as perceptions in the region of the US as a climate leader and the (dis)connects between climate action and COVID-19 responses. Sharon Seah is Senior Fellow and Coordinator at the ASEAN Studies Centre and the Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. She co-edited 50 Years of ASEAN and Singapore (World Scientific: 2017) and Building a New Legal Order for the Oceans (NUS Press: 2019). Prior to academia, Ms Seah worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore and the National E

Several months ago, Saskia Wieringa joined her co-authors Jess Melvin and Annie Pohlman on the show to talk about their edited volume The International People's Tribunal for 1965 and the Indonesian Genocide.   This time, Wieringa is on the show to talk about another co-edited volume.  Propaganda and the Genocide in Indonesia (Routledge, 2018) is a kind of companion volume to the first study. Wieringa and Katjusungkana focus here on the way in which propaganda set the stage for, encouraged participation in and offered explanations for the genocide. This campaign portrayed communists as enemies of the Indonesian nation. But more than that, the propaganda leveraged already existing political and gender stereotypes, presenting communists as atheists, hypersexualized and amoral. This propaganda was and remains widely accepted in Indonesia, enabling mass violence in the 1960s and political persecution in the decades since. But the book expands at time from its core focus on propaganda, shedding new light on the eve