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Necropolitics of the Ordinary

Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore

By Ruth E. Toulson

Can a state make its people forget the dead?

Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted with high population density and rapid economic growth, the government has ordered the...

Tai Herbalism

By Susan Conway

Who Cares?

COVID-19 Social Protection Responses in Southeast Asia

By Edited by Rosalia Sciortino

Who Cares? presents findings on the social protection response to the COVID-19 pandemic in six Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. After a regional overview, country-specific chapters narrate the pandemic's...

The Empire Looks South

Chinese Perceptions of Cambodia before and during the Kingdom of Angkor

By Peter Harris

The most famous firsthand account of the Kingdom of Angkor was left by the imperial Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan. But Zhou's was not the only portrait of Angkor and the kingdoms that came before it....

Vietnam

Asia's Rising Star

By Brook Taylor and Sam Korsmoe

Is Vietnam the world's next Tiger Economy? Can it grow like Taiwan and South Korea did when they were Tiger Economies in the 1980s and '90s? Brook Taylor and Sam Korsmoe bring together more than...

Regional Identities in Southeast Asia

Contemporary Challenges, Historical Fractures

By Jayeel Cornelio, Volker Grabowsky

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, is a community of multiple identities. Over time, its citizens' loyalties were formed around national and transnational frameworks involving ethnic, religious, and ideological affinities. In the post-independence...

Miscellany of the South Seas

A Chinese Scholar’s Chronicle of Shipwreck and Travel through 1830s Vietnam

By Cai Tinglan. Translated by Kathlene Baldanza and Zhao Lu

A riveting tale of danger, adventure, and connection

In 1835 young Chinese scholar Cai Tinglan was caught in a typhoon while sailing across the Taiwan Strait. He and his shipmates spent a harrowing week at sea...

The Camphor Tree and the Elephant

Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia

By Faizah Zakaria. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Uncovers a spiritual dimension in the transition to the Anthropocene

What is the role of religion in shaping interactions and relations between the human and nonhuman in nature? Why are Muslim and Christian organizations generally not...

The First Five

A New Collection of Southeast Asian Writing

By Chan Wai Han

Southeast Asia's literature is a rich mine of creativity, and stories and poems are readily accessible to readers who wish to take a quick dip into the literature of their neighbors. This anthology is a...

Art Fallen from Heaven

Modern Balinese Sculpture

By Koos van Brakel

Art Fallen from Heaven offers a new perspective on the origin of modern Balinese sculpture in the 1930s and an overview of its evolution from 1932 to 1973. Thoroughly illustrated with photos of traditional and...

Upland Geopolitics

Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush

By Michael B. Dwyer. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Cold War legacies in Southeast Asia enable new geographies of enclosure

In the twenty-first century, land deals in the Global South have become increasingly prevalent and controversial. Transnational access to arable land in impoverished "land-rich" countries...

Turning Land into Capital

Development and Dispossession in the Mekong Region

By Philip Hirsch, Kevin Woods, Natalia Scurrah, Michael B. Dwyer, K. Sivaramakrishnan

In Southeast Asia reversals of earlier agrarian reforms have rolled back "land-to-the-tiller" policies created in the wake of Cold War–era revolutions. This trend, marked by increased land concentration and the promotion of export-oriented agribusiness at...

Fixing the Image

Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh

By Jenna Grant

Introduced in Phnom Penh around 1990, at the twilight of socialism and after two decades of conflict and upheaval, ultrasound took root in humanitarian and then privatized medicine. Services have since multiplied, promising diagnostic information...

Community Movements in Southeast Asia

An Anthropological Perspective of Assemblages

By Ryoko Nishii, Shigeharu Tanabe

Derived from the terms community and social movement, Shigeharu Tanabe’s concept of community movements is the process by which people create alternative communities, practices, and worlds that resist the influence and imposition of hegemonic political...

In the Year of the Rabbit

A Novel

By Terence A. Harkin

Cameraman Brendan Leary survived the ambush of the Big Buddha Bicycle Race—but Tukada, his star-crossed lover, did not. Numb, Leary returns to combat, flying night operations over the mountains of Laos. When his gunship is...

Manuscript Cultures and Epigraphy of the Tai World

By Volker Grabowsky

During the past four decades an impressive corpus of manuscripts and epigraphical material in Thailand, Laos, and adjacent Tai-speaking areas has been surveyed, documented, and digitized. Scholarly interest in this material has not been restricted...

Music and Recording in King Chulalongkorn’s Bangkok

By James Leonard Mitchell

In Music and Recording in King Chulalongkorn’s Bangkok, James Leonard Mitchell provides the first comprehensive history of Siamese music during the celebrated reign of Rama V. Following up on his previous exploration of Thailand’s most...

Single Mothers and the State’s Embrace

Reproductive Agency in Vietnam

By Harriet M. Phinney

In the mid-1980s, after the Indochina Wars, a shortage of men meant that many single women in Vietnam found themselves without suitable marital prospects. A number of these women chose to pursue single motherhood by...

The City in Time

Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia

By Pamela N. Corey

Illuminates how the city has shaped contemporary artistic practice in Southeast Asia

In The City in Time, Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in...

Footprints of War

Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam

By David Andrew Biggs. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

When American forces arrived in Vietnam, they found themselves embedded in historic village and frontier spaces already shaped by many past conflicts. American bases and bombing targets followed spatial and political logics influenced by the...