New Books in Southeast Asian Studies

It’s not often that you run across a smoking gun. Jess Melvin did, at an archive in Banda Aceh. Since the massacres in Indonesia in 1965-66, academics, journalists, politicians and military officials  have argued about the motivations for the killing.  With little documentation to draw from, these debates relied on careful analysis of context and circumstance.  The result was widespread disagreement about how centralized the killing was and whether the killing was planned in advance. Melvin, in her new book The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder (Routledge, 2018), puts some of these questions to rest.  It seems clear from her work that, at least in the regions covered by her research, that the Army was looking for an occasion to eliminate the Communist Party.  And that it saw the clumsily executed kidnappings and killings of 1 October as a golden opportunity to put this plan into action.  Finally, while she lacks direct evidence for other regions in Indonesia, her efforts to apply her own insights to the rest of the country seem measured and logical. Melvin’s research is careful and thorough.  The book reminds me of Christopher Browning’s The Origins of the Final Solution–it feels like a detective working through every bit of evidence in an attempt to be fair and impartial.  Anyone studying the violence in Indonesia will have to reckon with Melvin’s book. This podcast is part of a short series on the mass atrocities in Indonesia.  Recently I talked with Geoff Robinson about his book The Killing Season and Kate MacGregor, Annie Pohlman and  Jess Melvin about their edited volume The Indonesian Genocide of 1965:  Causes, Dynamics and Legacies.  I’ll conclude the series soon with an interview with Vannessa Hearman about her book Unmarked Graves. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Jan M. Padios‘ new book A Nation on the Line: Call Centers as Postcolonial Predicaments in the Philippines (Duke University Press, ) sheds light on the industry of offshore call centers in the Philippines, and attempts to understand the narratives cast upon call center workers as laborers whose main resource is their ability to relate to their Western-and specifically American-clientele. What does it mean when we see relatability as a national resource? How are Filipino workers reshaped by this seemingly benevolent industry? Dr. Padios attempts to tackle these questions through years of transnational research involving interviews and participation, and through understanding call center work within a longer history of American colonization and neoliberal policies that have shaped the contemporary Philippines.    Christopher B. Patterson teaches at the University of British Columbia, Social Justice Institute. He is the author of Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific and Stamped: an anti-travel novel.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Today we are joined by Gerald Gems, Professor of Kinesiology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, and the author of several books on sports history including Sport in American History: From Colonization to Globalization (2017), Sport and the American Occupation of the Philippines (2016), and Blood and Guts to Glory: A History of Sports (2014).  Gems is also the former president of the North American Society for Sport History, the former vice-president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sports, and a former Fulbright Scholar. In Sport and the American Occupation of the Philippines: Bats, Balls, and Bayonets (Lexington Books, 2016), Gems explores the history of sport during the US occupation of the Philippines.  Based on extensive primary and secondary source research, Gems work uses hegemony theory to investigate how and why American colonizers imported ideas about sports to the Philippines, and in what circumstances Filipinos adopted, adapted, rejected these sporting practices.  He shows that American politicians, military planners, missionaries, and businessmen saw sports like baseball and basketball as essential for keeping soldiers physically and morally fit, while  teaching American values including capitalism, militarism, and work ethic.  Filipino sportsmen and women played some American sports, first baseball and later basketball, but on their own terms.  For many Filipino athletes, sports became a way to assert Filipino nationalism.  When they played basketball against US soldiers, they overcame American height advantages by developing a fast paced style and they likened their victories to the rapid strikes of Filipino guerrillas against the occupying forces. Gem’s work has resonance beyond the Philippines and will be interesting reading for scholars studying the translation of American ideas in similar colonial contexts.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez‘s new book, The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age (University of Illinois Press, 2018) traces how globalization, neoliberalism and new technology have reshaped migrant care work from the Philippines. The book is the result of five years of research interviewing migrant women and participating in their communities, as well as intermittent trips to the Philippines where Dr. Francisco-Menchavez spent time speaking with the families and extended families of migrant workers. Her book attempts to redefine notions of care and overseas employment that focus solely on the worker’s labor, and rather to understand a form of what she calls “multidirectional care,” which describes the ways in which “transnational family members activate multiple resources, people, and networks to redefine care work in the family” (23). Dr. Francisco-Menchavez explores this larger network of care to understand how migrant work affects gender roles and creates new solidarities. Christopher B. Patterson teaches at the University of British Columbia, Social Justice Institute. He is the author of Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific and Stamped: an anti-travel novel.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

From the sidelines of the Asian Studies Association of Australia’s biennial conference, where she presented the inaugural keynote address of the Association of Mainland Southeast Asia Scholars, Katherine A. Bowie, joined New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to talk about Of Beggars and Buddhas: The Politics of Humor in the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand (University of Wisconsin Press, 2017). Bowie at first hated the Vessantara Jataka: a story in which women and children are objects to be given away so as to demonstrate extraordinary generosity of the Buddha-to-be. But she reconciled her initially negative reaction with a growing awareness of the possibility for the story to offer up counter-hegemonic and deeply humorous readings. This awareness led her, through oral historical and archival work, to track the movement of the story across Thailand’s north, northeast and central regions. Along the way she found considerable divergence in how it has been told and received. In those parts of the country where Bangkok’s control has been greatest, the story’s subversive teeth have been blunted or removed, while in those farthest from the central ruler, villagers can at least recount its satirical contents, even if the full blown bawdy vaudeville style performances of yore, with monks as lead entertainers, are today largely a thing of the past. Participating in the discussion as a special guest on this episode is Patrick Jory, whose Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the Idea of the Perfect Man, has already featured on the channel. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

I don’t often start these blog posts with comments about the cover art.  But the reproduction of Alit Ambara’s “After 1965,” featured on the cover of the new set of essays The Indonesian Genocide of 1965: Causes, Dynamics and Legacies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), fits the subject perfectly.  The piece compels your gaze, while resisting easy interpretations and answers. I found the book much the same. The essays, edited by Katharine McGregor, Jess Melvin, Annie Pohlman, demand attention.  Roughly divided into two sections, they range from military/political analyses to contemplations about the way the genocide left its mark on individuals and communities to reflections on the failures of the Indonesian state to acknowledge its complicity. Each individual essay informs and challenges. I have a new appreciation of the nature of the Genocide Convention and  the ways it can be interpreted after reading. Annie Pohlman and Jess Melvin’s essay on the logic for calling the killings genocide  And the pieces on efforts by visual artists (by Kate McGregor) and puppeteers (by Marianna Lis) left me running to google to learn more. As I said in the interview, I learned an enormous amount from the book. But collectively the essays are also a call to action. As you’ll hear in the interview, the editors are clear-eyed about the long-term consequences of the violence and the failures of Indonesians to address this. Fifty years on, the struggle to understand the genocide and address its consequences continues. This podcast is part of a short series on the mass atrocities in Indonesia. Last month, I talked with Geoff Robinson about his book The Killing Season. In the months to come, I’ll be speaking with Jess Melvin and Vannessa Hearman about their research on killings. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Ahead of a nominal general election scheduled in Cambodia for the end of July 2018, Michael Sullivan, author of Cambodia Votes: Democracy, Authority and International Support for Elections 1993–2013 (NIAS Press, 2016), joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to make a case for elections there, however fraught, as a site of authentic struggle. Tracking Cambodian elections from the unprecedented UN-managed election of 1993 up to the present, Sullivan examines the complex relations and agendas that inform and enliven these events: domestic and international, bureaucratic and personal, technical and political. Against the idea of Hun Sen as hegemon, Sullivan maintains that electoral cycles in Cambodia reveal just how tenuous the ruling party, and its leader’s, hold on government really is. Even under highly oppressive political conditions they represent, he argues, an opportunity for an “inherent democratic impulse” to be realized. Going beyond particulars, Sullivan also offers Cambodia as an instructive case for international agencies that invest heavily in projects for social and political change which, when they do not turn out as planned, force reappraisals but not withdrawals of funding or support—even in conditions where political opponents of the ruling party are killed or exiled. Going to the 2018 Asian Studies Association of Australia biennial conference at the University of Sydney? Join us for a special New Books in Southeast Asian Studies panel (Session 2.4), with Holly High, Patrick Jory and Lee Morgenbesser. Check out the conference website for details. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

I first assigned Joshua Oppenheimer’s film “The Act of Killing” for my course in Comparative Genocide at Newman.  The movie is a documentary about the mass violence in Indonesia beginning in 1965.  My students and I found it chilling:  emotionally moving, troubling, and enormously sad.  Naturally, they had many questions. I wasn’t able to answer many of them.  It turned out, the killings in Indonesia had received far less attention than other cases of mass violence. In the brief few years since then, this has started to change.  So I’m going to devote three interviews to this topic. Later this summer, I’ll talk with Katharine McGregor and Annie Pohlman about their edited volume The Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66 and Jess Melvin about her book The Army and the Indonesian Genocide. We’ll start, however, with Geoffrey Robinson and his book The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-1966 (Princeton University Press, 2018). The book is a carefully argued, thoroughly researched attempt to understand what happened following the kidnapping and killing of several army generals on 1 October 1965.  The book is narrative, but it’s also intensely analytical. Robinson is most interested in understanding what happened and why, questions disputed since the very hours the violence began.  He’s also interested in the long-term implications of the violence for Indonesian political culture, for the experience of victims and perpetrators and for attempts to come to grips with the past.  It’s an extraordinary analysis. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Recent years have brought a burgeoning interest in how highland people in mainland Southeast Asia live and communicate along and across the boundaries geographically assigned states whose lowland people and their rulers were once but are by now no longer so far away. In The Lisu: Far from the Ruler (University Press of Colorado, 2017), Michele Zack offers an account of how one group dispersed across the geographic territory of three countries—Yunnan Province in China, and the northernmost reaches of Myanmar and Thailand—is responding to the challenges of the present. Initially researched in the 1990s and completed following further travel and interviews done in the 2010s, Zack’s book is attentive to how much the ways and means of being Lisu are changing with the times, and also committed to a view that they do have an essential coherence. Not just a shared language but a character and outlook that makes them familiar to one another, she writes, distinguishing them not only from the people of the lowlands and their rulers, but also other “less anarchic” highlanders. Michele Zack joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss her time spent travelling and researching among Lisu along the borderlands of China and Southeast Asia over two decades, and to share her experiences and tips on starting, stopping and starting a book all over again. Going to the Asian Studies Association of Australia biennial conference? Join us for a special New Books in Southeast Asian Studies panel (Session 2.4), with Holly High, Patrick Jory and Lee Morgenbesser. Check out the conference website for details. Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

As any scholar of the Vietnam War can tell you, the field doesn’t lack for study: it’s one of the most-studied fields for both military and diplomatic historians. And yet, for all of the scholarly attention it has received, there are understudied facets of this complicated, multilateral conflict, particularly in its early years, before American ground troops entered the country in large numbers. Jessica Elkind’s Aid Under Fire: Nation Building and the Vietnam War (University of Kentucky Press, 2016) does precisely this by examining U.S. development programs that tried to foster a viable South Vietnamese state in the 1950s and early 1960s. The outcomes of those disparate programs ultimately deepened a U.S. commitment to the Republic of South Vietnam and helped set the United States on the road to war. Dr. Elkind’s research was conducted using U.S. government sources, private collections from Michigan State University, and South Vietnamese government sources held in Ho Chi Minh City. Michigan State University was an important actor in this narrative because it was responsible for establishing and running certain programs. In each of the book’s five chapters, she examines a different aid program, ranging from the resettlement programs created for refugees fleeing the newly-created North Vietnam, to agricultural aid and development, to police training. What emerges from these various perspectives is a view of widely-ranging intentions and goals that often differed starkly. Not only did the U.S. government and South Vietnamese government disagree on what would constitute effective aid and development, the public-private partnership that existed between the U.S. government and Michigan State University also frayed as the individual aid workers began to lose faith in their mission. As the United States and the international community confronts global problems about development and nation-building, Aid Under Fire suggests lessons that policymakers and the public should heed. Development cannot succeed without taking into account the wishes of the people who are receiving aid, and simply transplanting western modalities cannot work without taking into account the conditions on the ground. As Elkind demonstrates, overconfidence in nation-building can have dire consequences.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies