New Books in Southeast Asian Studies

Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines (Duke UP, 2022) investigates the ways in which racial and class hierarchies shaped the monetary policy and banking systems in the Philippines. Combining historical research and normative arguments calling for unconditional decolonization, Allan E. S. Lumba advances a powerful account of how the logics and practices of racial capitalism advanced the United States’ ‘counter-decolonization’ efforts in the Philippines.In this podcast, Lumba shares the book’s back story, his theoretical inspirations that informed his core arguments, and the importance of understanding the global capitalist order from the perspective of postcolonial nations.Allan E. S. Lumba is a Global American Studies postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center and visiting faculty in the Department of History. He has also served as resident fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago and University of Michigan's Bentley Library. His teaching experience and interests spans across myriad fields, including: Southeast Asian history, Asian American and Ethnic studies, U.S. in the World, and Comparative World history.The open access edition of this book is available here.Like this interview? You may also be interested in: Martin Edwards, The IMF, the WTO & the Politics of Economic Surveillance (Routledge 2018) Jakob Feinig, Moral Economies of Money: Politics and the Monetary Constitution of Society (Stanford University Press 2022) Nicole Curato is a Professor of Sociology in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She co-hosts the New Books in Southeast Asia Studies channel.This episode was created in collaboration with Erron C. Medina of the Development Studies Program of Ateneo De Manila University and Nicole Anne Revita.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Blending travelogue, history, and archaeology, Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand (SUNY Press, 2023) unravels the various avatars of India's most famous emperor, revealing how he came to be remembered—and forgotten—in distinctive ways at particular points in time and in specific locations. Through personal journeys that take her across India and to various sites and cities in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand, archaeologist Nayanjot Lahiri explores how Ashoka's visibility from antiquity to the modern era has been accompanied by a reinvention of his persona. Although the historical Ashoka spoke expansively of his ideas of governance and a new kind of morality, his afterlife is a jumble of stories and representations within various Buddhist imaginings. By remembering Ashoka selectively, Lahiri argues, ancient kings and chroniclers created an artifice, constantly appropriating and then remolding history to suit their own social visions, political agendas, and moral purposes.Nayanjot Lahiri is Professor of History at Ashoka University. Her previous books include Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was Discovered; Marshalling the Past: Ancient India and Its Modern Histories; and Ashoka in Ancient India, which was awarded the John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History in 2016.Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

In July 1813, a young American couple from Boston arrived in the Buddhist kingdom of Burma to preach the gospel. Although Burmese Buddhists largely resisted Christian evangelism, members of minority religious communities embraced Baptist teachings and practices, reimagining both Buddhism and Christianity in the process. In her new book, Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom (Columbia UP, 2023), religious studies scholar Alex Kaloyanides explores this history of power and conversion through the lens of sacred objects. Previously Tricycle’s managing editor, Kaloyanides now serves as an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Kaloyanides to discuss the religious material culture of 19th-century Burma, what we miss when we study religions solely through their texts, and how her research has shaped how she thinks about religious conflict today.Tricycle: The Buddhist Review provides a unique and independent public forum for exploring Buddhism, establishing a dialogue between Buddhism and the broader culture, and introducing Buddhist thinking to Western disciplines. Tricycle Talks is a monthly podcast featuring prominent voices from within and beyond the Buddhist fold. Listen to more episodes here.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Eighty years on, Lin Poyer's book War at the Margins: Indigenous Experiences in World War II (U Hawaii Press, 2022) offers a global and comparative view of the impact of World War II on Indigenous societies. Indigenous peoples, Poyer shows, had a distinct experience of WWII, as those on the margins of Allied and Axis empires and nation-states were drawn in as soldiers, scouts, guides, laborers, and victims. Using historical and ethnographic sources, Poyer examines how Indigenous communities emerged from the trauma of the wartime era with social forms and cultural ideas that laid the foundations for their twenty-first-century emergence as players on the world’s political stage.This book is available open access here.Lin Poyer is a cultural anthropologist and professor emerita at the University of Wyoming.Holger Droessler is an Assistant Professor of History at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on the intersection of empire and labor in the Pacific.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Why was the May 2023 Thai election such a historic election? What does the surprising Move Forward victory tell us about the state of Thai politics? And what happens next? Duncan McCargo and Ken Lohatepanont join Petra Alderman to discuss the historic Thai vote and the post-election developments.Duncan McCargo is Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen.Ken Lohatepanont is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcastSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Ethnoreligious Otherings and Passionate Conflicts (Oxford UP, 2022) lays bare the causal mechanisms that lead state and non-state actors to identify particular ethnoreligious groups as threats to security, power, and status. It focuses on the cases of Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines to demonstrate how ethnoreligious others are transformed from strangers to enemies through passions, nationalism, and securitization. Advancing a novel ethnoreligious othering framework, the book offers a distinctive approach to understanding protracted conflict beyond dominant paradigms in international relations and conflict studies.In this interview, author Michael Magcamit shares the book’s back story, his ethical principles when doing field research in emotionally-charged and securitised sites, and the policy implications of his research.Michael Magcamit is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Global Politics at the University of Manchester. Before joining Manchester in August 2023, Michael was a Lecturer in Security Studies at the University of Leicester (2021-2023), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Queen Mary University of London (2019-2021), and an assistant professor of Political Science at Musashi University (2016-2019). His research has been published in the International Studies Quarterly, International Politics, Political Science, and International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, among others. He is the author of Ethnoreligious Otherings and Passionate Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 2022) and Small Powers and Trading Security (Palgrave/Springer, 2016).To read the book, click the open access version here.Like this interview? You may also be interested in: Eve Monique Zucker and Ben Kiernan, Political Violence in Southeast Asia since 1945 (Routledge 2021) Elisabeth King and Cyrus Samii, Diversity, Violence, and Recognition: How Recognizing Ethnic Identity Promotes Peace (Oxford University Press 2020) Nicole Curato is a Professor of Sociology in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She co-hosts the New Books in Southeast Asia Studies channel.This episode was created in collaboration with Erron C. Medina of the Development Studies Program of Ateneo De Manila University and Nicole Anne Revita.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

In lower–income economies, a small change in people’s wellbeing may trigger a suite of behavioral responses, some of which may be unlawful as well as violent. Motives and modes of conflict vary. In regions with high agricultural dependence, conflict can be linked with harvest-time windfalls. Agriculture is a crucial sector for employment and income generation in South East Asia, where poverty is relatively high, and civil conflict and social unrest have been defining features of the region’s politics. Associate Professor of Economics David Ubilava discusses harvest time violence and why this is occurring in South East Asia.Dr Natali Pearson is Curriculum Coordinator at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, a university-wide multidisciplinary center at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on the protection, management and interpretation of underwater cultural heritage in Southeast Asia.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

re there ways to tackle pressing social, environmental and economic problems at once? In this episode, Professor Assunta Cuyegkeng from Ateneo de Manilla University in Philippines joins Pilvi Posio to discuss the research and practice of social entrepreneurship that offers potential solutions for building holistic social, economic and also environmental sustainability. Based on the recent book Creating Sustainable Value in Social Enterprises: Stories of Social Innovation (Ateneo de Manila UP, 2021) she has published with her colleagues, Assunta introduces various examples of social enterprises in Philippines and challenges they face when aiming at generating social value through their innovative business models. These creative entrepreneurial practices engage and empower stakeholders and as such offer a way to compensate for systemic institutional failures especially in emergent economies often suffering from widespread poverty and inequality.Assunta Cuyegkeng is proferssor at the Department of Educational Leadership and Management of the Ateneo de Manilla university in Philippines, the director of the Ateneo Institute of Sustainability.Pilvi Posio is senior researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Finland, and the coordinator of the project Finnish-ASEAN Academic Platform for Sustainable Development run by the Finnish University Network of Asian Studies.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

If you’ve visited Thailand even for a short time you’ve probably been given, or have come across, some basic instructions on dos and don’ts — where to put, or not to put, your hands and feet, what to wear or not to wear to a temple, why not to get angry in public, that sort of thing. Perhaps you’ve wondered about the pedagogies that give these social practices their durability. And whether you’ve been to the country or not you might have seen news reports showing prime ministers and army generals prostrate in front of members of the royal family, and have wondered how almost a century after the demise of the absolute monarchy deference to sovereign power is so resolutely performed.If so, then you’ve come to the right podcast! On this episode of New Books in Southeast Asian Studies one of the channel hosts, Patrick Jory, sits on the interviewee’s side of the microphone to talk about his A History of Manners and Civility in Thailand (Cambridge University Press, 2021). In a wide-ranging discussion Patrick outlines how manners have been codified over successive periods in Thailand; why Norbert Elias is still relevant for an understanding of the civilizing process not only in Europe but beyond, and the pertinence historical research for interpreting Thai society and politics into the 21st century.Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Patrick Jory, Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy Roderic Broadhurst et al, Violence and the Civilising Process in Cambodia Yoshinori Nishizaki, Dynastic Democracy: Political Families of Thailand Nick Cheesman is Associate Professor, Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University. He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series on the New Books Network.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Tamas Wells' book Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers (Amsterdam UP, 2021) analyses what Myanmar's struggle for democracy signified to Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and to their international allies, before the 2021 military coup. In doing so, it explores how understanding contested meanings of democracy helps make sense of the country's tortuous path before and after Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won historic elections in 2015. Using Burmese and English language sources, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar reveals how the country's struggles for democracy existed not only in opposition to Burmese military elites, but also within networks of local activists and democratic leaders, and international aid workers.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