Category: Southeast Asia

Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi

Posted on by stephchun

Luc XiWhat does it mean when a city of 180,000 people has more than 5,000 women working as prostitutes? This question frames Vu Trong Phung’s 1937 classic reportage Luc Xi. In the late 1930s, Hanoi had a burgeoning commercial sex industry that involved thousands of people and hundreds of businesses. It was the center of the city’s nightlife and the source of suffering, violence, exploitation, and a venereal disease epidemic. For Phung, a popular writer and intellectual, it also raised disturbing questions about the state of Vietnamese society and culture and whether his country really was “progressing” under French colonial rule. Translator Shaun Kingsley Malarney’s thoughtful and multifaceted introduction provides historical background on colonialism, prostitution, and venereal disease in Vietnam and discusses reportage as a literary genre, political tool, and historical source. A fully annotated translation of Luc Xi follows, in which Phung takes readers into the heart of colonial Hanoi’s sex industry, portraying its female workers, the officials who attempted to regulate it, the doctors who treated its victims, and the secretive medical facility known as the Nha Luc Xi (“The Dispensary”), which examined prostitutes for venereal diseases and held them for treatment.

“Among the most celebrated works of Vietnamese non-fiction reportage, Vu Trọng Phụng’s Luc Xi illuminates the culture of prostitution and the politics of venereal disease prevention in colonial Hanoi. Shaun Malarney’s translation of the text is both elegant and accurate and his detailed introduction provides useful historical context while advancing an important argument about social imbalances embedded within the institutions of colonial medicine. This is an exceptional work of historical scholarship.” —Peter Zinoman, University of California, Berkeley

Southeast Asia: Politics Meaning and Memory
November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3467-8 / $45.00 (CLOTH)

Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society

Posted on by stephchun

Modern Buddhist ConjuncturesFor centuries, Burmese have looked to the authority of their religious tradition, Theravada Buddhism, to negotiate social and political hierarchies. Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society, by Juliane Schober, examines those moments in the modern history of this Southeast Asian country when religion, culture, and politics converge to chart new directions. Arguing against Max Weber’s characterization of Buddhism as other-worldly and divorced from politics, this study shows that Buddhist practice necessitates public validation within an economy of merit in which moral action earns future rewards. The intervention of colonial modernity in traditional Burmese Buddhist worldviews has created conjunctures at which public concerns critical to the nation’s future are reinterpreted in light of a Buddhist paradigm of power.

“Juliane Schober argues that Buddhist conceptions and practices are inevitably tied to conceptions of political power in social, economic, and political realms. In doing so she challenges as obsolete inherited categories of knowledge that define a normative view of Theravada Buddhism as otherworldly, nonpolitical, nonviolent, and ‘protestantized.’ Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar is essential reading for an understanding of the genealogies of hegemony and subjugation, patronage and resistance, and power and loss in contemporary Myanmar, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of Buddhism in Southeast Asia.” —Donald Swearer, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3382-4 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Robert Pringle at East-West Center Event in DC

Posted on by stephchun

Pringle in DCLast month Robert Pringle, author of Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity, spoke about his book at an East-West Center event in Washington, D.C. Understanding Islam seeks to clearly outline the role of Islam in Indonesia, covering the history of Islam’s arrival, its development over time, as well as the role it plays in the politics of the growing democracy. Dr. Pringle was joined by Michael H. Anderson (shown on the right in the photo), a recently retired senior foreign service officer and an Asia public diplomacy specialist.

A Memoir of World War II Interment in the Philippines

Posted on by stephchun

Child of WarHours after attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese bombers stormed across the Philippine city of Baguio, where seven-year-old Curt Tong, the son of American missionaries, hid with his classmates in the woods near his school. Three weeks later, Curt, his mother, and two sisters were among the nearly five hundred Americans who surrendered to the Japanese army in Baguio. Child of War: A Memoir of World War II Internment in the Philippines is Tong’s touching story of the next three years of his childhood as he endured fear, starvation, sickness, and separation from his father while interned in three different Japanese prison camps on the island of Luzon. Written by the adult Tong looking back on his wartime ordeal, it offers a rich trove of memories about internment life and camp experiences.

“This unique work, a memoir written in a retrospective fashion through the eyes of a child, offers an alternate view of events surrounding the World War II internment of American civilian families by the Japanese. A pre-teen sees different aspects of life in an internment camp which adults may not notice or attach significance to, and yet they tell volumes about camp conditions, the tenor of Japanese treatment, and the nature of the various Japanese commandants. Anyone interested in issues of internment would find this rich and unusual cache of memories eye-opening.” —Frances B. Cogan, author of Captured: The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines, 1941–1945

October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3539-2 / $27.00 (PAPER)

Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War

Posted on by stephchun

In Buddha's CompanyIn Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War, by Richard A. Ruth, explores a previously neglected aspect of the Vietnam War: the experiences of the Thai troops who served there and the attitudes and beliefs that motivated them to volunteer. Thailand sent nearly 40,000 volunteer soldiers to South Vietnam to serve alongside the Free World Forces in the conflict, but unlike the other foreign participants, the Thais came armed with historical and cultural knowledge of the region. Blending the methodologies of cultural and military history, Ruth examines the individual experiences of Thai volunteers in their wartime encounters with American allies, South Vietnamese civilians, and Viet Cong enemies. Ruth shows how the Thais were transformed by living amongst the modern goods and war machinery of the Americans and by traversing the jungles and plantations haunted by indigenous spirits. At the same time, Ruth argues, Thailand’s ruling institutions used the image of volunteers to advance their respective agendas, especially those related to anticommunist authoritarianism.

“From 1965 to 1972 Thailand sent nearly 38,000 military personnel to fight in the Vietnam War. Based on interviews with rank and file volunteers, who saw themselves as Buddhist warriors, this book is the first serious study of Thailand’s involvement in the war. Richard Ruth challenges the stereotypes and lazy generalizations about this forgotten episode of the war, and he offers fresh and compelling arguments to explain how this episode has contributed to the militarism in Thailand’s modern history.” —Craig J. Reynolds, Australian National University

Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory
September 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3489-0 / $24.00 (PAPER)

The Asian Development Bank, China, and Thailand

Posted on by stephchun

Bounding the MekongTransnational economic integration has been described by globalization boosters as a rising tide that will lift all boats, an opportunity for all participants to achieve greater prosperity through a combination of political cooperation and capitalist economic competition. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has championed such rhetoric in promoting the integration of China, Southeast Asia’s formerly socialist states, and Thailand into a regional project called the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). But while the GMS project is in fact hastening regional economic integration, Bounding the Mekong: The Asian Development Bank, China, and Thailand, by Jim Glassman, shows that the approach belies the ADB’s idealized description of “win-win” outcomes. The process of “actually existing globalization” in the GMS does provide varied opportunities for different actors, but it is less a rising tide that lifts all boats than an uneven flood of transnational capitalist development whose outcomes are determined by intense class struggles, market competition, and regulatory battles.

“This book provides a powerful expose of the hollowness of much of the mainstream institutional discourse on free markets and region-making, as well as the ideological underpinnings of the agendas of the Asian Development Bank and the naturalizing discourse that sees states and regulation as somehow an aberration. Glassman’s analysis is highly original and brings a fresh approach to a region about which a lot has been written in recent years. The theoretical underpinning of the scholarship is more than just sound—it is a tour de force. The book fills an important niche in bringing well theorized analysis to a specifically contextualized region.” —Philip Hirsch, University of Sydney

September 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3444-9 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Desire and Difference in Indonesia

Posted on by stephchun

Falling into the Lesbi WorldFalling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia, by Evelyn Blackwood, offers a compelling view of sexual and gender difference through the everyday lives of tombois and their girlfriends (“femmes”) in the city of Padang, West Sumatra. While likening themselves to heterosexual couples, tombois and femmes contest and blur dominant constructions of gender and heterosexuality. Tombois are masculine females who identify as men and desire women; their girlfriends view themselves as normal women who desire men. Through rich, in-depth, and provocative stories, author Evelyn Blackwood shows how these same-sex Indonesian couples negotiate transgressive identities and desires and how their experiences speak to the struggles and desires of sexual and gender minorities everywhere.

“Falling into the Lesbi World sheds valuable light on the ways in which locally distinctive sensibilities articulate with regional, national, and transnational discourses bearing on the making of gender and sexual identities among Indonesia’s Minangkabau. This is a very sophisticated, nuanced, and theoretically provocative piece of work that is simultaneously lucid and compelling; it will be of great interest to Southeast Asianists and others committed to understanding gender diversity and sexual subjectivities in postcolonial contexts and beyond.” —Michael G. Peletz, Emory University

September 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3487-6 / $24.00 (PAPER)

New Title in the Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication Series

Posted on by stephchun

A Dictionary of Mah MeriMah Meri is an Aslian (Austroasiatic: Mon-Khmer) language spoken in scattered settlements along a section of the southwest coast of Selangor in Peninsular Malaysia. The Mah Meri are the only Aslian speakers who live in a coastal environment. Their language, which may have about 2,000 speakers, has no written language and is highly endangered.

A Dictionary of Mah Meri as Spoken at Bukit Bangkong, by Nicole Kruspe, is the first comprehensive dictionary of the language and is based on the author’s extensive field research and consultation with members of the community over the last ten years. The dialect presented here is spoken by about 600 people at Bukit Bangkong, the most southerly Mah Meri settlement. The dictionary contains around 4,000 entries, each with a phonetic transcription and translations in both English and Malay.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3493-7 / $40.00 (PAPER)
Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication #36

Understanding Islam in Indonesia Launch and Author Q&A

Posted on by stephchun

Understanding IslamLast month the USINDO (United States-Indonesia Society) in Washington, D.C., hosted a book launch for Robert Pringle’s Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity. Read about the launch here, including comments by Mr. Salman Al Farisi, Chargé d’Affaires, Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia, and Dr. Jonah Blank, Policy Director, South and Southeast Asia, Committee on Foreign Relations (Majority), United States Senate, and a brief Q&A with the author.

Understanding Islam in Indonesia

Posted on by stephchun

Understanding IslamThere are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other country, but most people outside the region know little about the nation, much less about the practice of Islam among its diverse peoples or the religion’s influence on the politics of the republic. In Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity, Robert Pringle explains the advent of Islam in Indonesia, its development, and especially its contemporary circumstances. The author’s incisive writing provides the necessary background and demystifies the spectrum of politically active Muslim groups in Indonesia today.

“This is not only a comprehensive, well-balanced, and very informative account of past and present developments in Islam in Indonesia but also by far the most readable.” —Jamie Mackie, emeritus professor and visiting fellow in the Indonesia Project, Australian National University

April 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3415-9 / $22.00 (PAPER)

UH Press Distributing the Cornell East Asia Series and KITLV Press

Posted on by stephchun

University of Hawai‘i Press is pleased to announce it is now a distributor for the Cornell East Asia Series (excluding North America) and KITLV Press (North America only).

The Cornell East Asia Series is produced by the Cornell University East Asia Program and publishes a wide range of genres on subjects relative to the cultures of China, Japan, and Korea. For the complete list of titles distributed by UH Press, click here.

KITLV Press is the publishing department of the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies and is the publisher of the longest-running anthropological and linguistic journal in the world (since 1851), Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania. For the complete list of titles distributed by UH Press, click here.

MENU