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 […]
SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES: Book Review
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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 […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 1 Signs of Deference, Signs of Demeanour: Interlocutor Reference and Self-Other Relations across Southeast Asian Speech Communities Dwi Noverini Djenar and Jack Sidnell, eds. Singapore: NUS Press, 2023. The edited collection Signs of Deference, Signs of Demeanour is an important milestone in bringing the insights of […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 1 Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia Katharine E. McGregor Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2023. The issue of “comfort women” is about the history of sexual violence and Japan’s military-enforced slavery system in Asia. At the same time, it touches on issues […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 1 Repossessing Shanland: Myanmar, Thailand, and a Nation-State Deferred Jane M. Ferguson Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2021. Since its independence in 1948, Myanmar has not experienced prolonged political stability either with respect to relations between ethnic groups or with respect to civil-military relations. One could […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 1 Burmese Haze: US Policy and Myanmar’s Opening—and Closing Erin Murphy Ann Arbor: Association of Asian Studies, 2022. The United States has diverse national interests and poses strategic threats in several Asian states, with significant diplomatic, economic, security, and geopolitical implications. China’s rising power challenges the […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 1 The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory Kevin Blackburn Singapore: NUS Press, 2022. Kevin Blackburn’s The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory broadens understanding of “comfort women”1) by uncovering the “disappeared” collective memory of Singapore as a onetime “centre for comfort […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 1 Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories: Jarai and Other Lives in the Cambodian Highlands Jonathan Padwe Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories delves into the relationship the Jarai of Tang Kadon village have forged with their land as it has been tested through […]
Contents>> Vol. 13, No. 1 Stone Masters: Power Encounters in Mainland Southeast Asia Holly High, ed. Singapore: NUS Press, 2022. While Stone Masters: Power Encounters in Mainland Southeast Asia initially introduces itself rather humbly as an examination of “stone veneration in mainland Southeast Asia” (p. 5), it quickly expands into a […]