Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 3 Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development Anto Mohsin Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2023. In his seminal article “The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture,” Benedict Anderson (1972, 22) likened the concept of Javanese power to a lamp radiating light outward with […]
SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES: Book Review
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Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 3 The Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Power, Politics, and Resistance in Transitional Justice Julie Bernath Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2023. The Khmer Rouge genocide, a historical tragedy that continues to resonate in Cambodia’s politics, underscores the importance of understanding the country’s social and political dynamics. Julie […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 3 BOOK REVIEWS Malaysiakini and the Power of Independent Media in Malaysia Janet Steele Singapore: NUS Press, 2023. Janet Steele’s Malaysiakini and the Power of Independent Media in Malaysia provides a timely chronicle of modern Malaysian history, seen through the eyes of Malaysiakini—“arguably Malaysia’s most important […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 Postcolonial Configurations: Dictatorship, the Racial Cold War, and Filipino America Josen Masangkay Diaz Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2023. Josen Masangkay Diaz’s book is a timely intervention on issues of Filipino identity vis-à-vis the Philippine diaspora, postcolonial specificity, and authoritarian history. Indeed, Bongbong Marcos’s […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 Infiltrating Society: The Thai Military’s Internal Security Affairs Puangthong Pawakapan Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2021. All of the Thai rulers’ traditional rivals—Burmese, Khmer, Lao, and Vietnamese—were demilitarized by being subjected to European colonialism. As a result, the “modern Thai” army (and navy) had […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench, and Jean-Christophe Galipaud, eds. Singapore: NUS Press, 2021. Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present offers a fresh perspective on sea nomad-related issues by presenting, linking, […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 Just Another Crisis? The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Southeast Asia’s Rice Sector Jamie S. Davidson, ed. Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2023. Nearly all fields of social science have analyzed the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just Another Crisis? focuses on the […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health Governance, Migrant Labour, and International Health Crises Anoma P. van der Veere, Florian Schneider, and Catherine Yuk-ping Lo, eds. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022. Global Health and South Asia in a Time of Crisis: A […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human-Becomings in West Papua Sophie Chao Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. Nausea. Anger. Grief. With these three words, Sophie Chao introduces the reader to the feelings that overwhelm her whenever she drives through the vast, monotonous fields of monocrop […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 Ramayana Theater in Contemporary Southeast Asia Madoka Fukuoka, ed. Singapore: Jenny Stanford Publishing, 2023. Ramayana Theater in Contemporary Southeast Asia provides an introduction to Ramayana performances across contemporary Southeast Asia, with chapters on Cambodia (Sam-Ang Sam on a range of Khmer art forms inspired by […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia Karen Strassler Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2020. It took a decade for Karen Strassler to come up with her second and much-awaited book. Indeed, it could have taken much longer to do the ethnographic […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 2 BOOK REVIEWS A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine C. Pierce Salguero New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. In her review of C. Pierce Salguero’s 2014 book Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China, Janet Gyatso observed: “There has been a small explosion in the study […]