Monthly Archives: August 2015

Born Out of Place: Migrant Mothers and the Politics of International Labor Nicole Constable Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014, xvii+259p. Scholars have theoretically couched late twentieth century and early twenty-first century human migration in terms of metaphors that invoke global fluidity, risk, uncertainty, and the dismantling of previous […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 The Chinese Question: Ethnicity, Nation, and Region in and beyond the Philippines Caroline S. Hau Singapore: NUS Press in association with Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2014, ix+379p. Close observers of Philippine politics and society might have recently come across two newsworthy stories of the year […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years Susan F. Quimpo and Nathan Gilbert Quimpo Manila: Anvil Publishing, 2012, 468p. In recent years, there have been a number of publications which reflect on the troubled history of the Philippines during the Marcos years, a […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs: The Modernization of the Indonesian City, 1920–1960 Freek Colombijn and Joost Coté, eds. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 351p. Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs: The Modernization of the Indonesian City, 1920–1960 is a commendable collection of essays that present modernization and the city not […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 Living with Risk: Precarity and Bangkok’s Urban Poor Tamaki Endo Singapore: NUS Press in association with Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2014, 360p. Given the paucity of books and articles written about the day-to-day living of the poor and the informal economy in Bangkok, this book […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 Traditionalism and the Ascendancy of the Malay Ruling Class in Colonial Malaya Donna J. Amoroso Petaling Jaya, Selangor: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre; Singapore: NUS Press, 2014, 276p. The recently concluded November 2014 United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) General Assembly saw strident calls for […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 The Palm Oil Controversy in Southeast Asia: A Transnational PerspectiveOliver Pye and Jayati Bhattacharya, eds. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Publishing, 2013, xxi+283p. This book of 12 chapters demonstrates the effects of rapidly growing palm oil industry in Southeast Asia from a variety of […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 The Golden Lands: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam (Architecture of the Buddhist World) Vikram Lall Kuala Lumpur: JF Publishing, 2014, 280p. This is a large-format (335×260 mm) book with a hard cover, printed on glossy art-quality paper, and contains numerous color photographs by professional […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 The Buddha on Mecca’s Verandah: Encounters, Mobilities, and Histories along the Malaysian-Thai Border Irving Chan Johnson Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012, 223p. “One’s identity . . . is never static” (p. ix). Irving Chan Johnson’s The Buddha on Mecca’s Verandah goes deep into anthropological “thick […]

Contents>> Vol. 4, No. 2 BOOK REVIEWS Forest of Struggle: Moralities of Remembrance in Upland Cambodia Eve Monique Zucker Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013, 256p. Eve Zucker’s book, Forest of Struggle is an important contribution to the literature on societies in the aftermath of extreme violence and specifically to […]