Southeast Asia is a dynamic and rapidly-changing region which continues to defy predictions and challenge formulaic understandings. This series will publish cutting-edge work on the region, providing a venue for books that are readable, topical, interdisciplinary and critical of conventional views. It aims to communicate the energy, contestations and ambiguities that make Southeast Asia both consistently fascinating and sometimes potentially disturbing.
By Petra Alderman
July 27, 2023
Branding Authoritarian Nations offers a novel approach to the study of nation branding as a strategy for political legitimation in authoritarian regimes using the example of military-ruled Thailand. The book argues that nation branding is a political act that is integral to state legitimation ...
By Rommel Curaming
October 24, 2019
Examining two state-sponsored history writing projects in Indonesia and the Philippines in the 1970s, this book illuminates the contents and contexts of the two projects and, more importantly, provides a nuanced characterization of the relationship between embodiments of power (state, dictators, ...
By Michael Hatherell
May 14, 2019
This book analyses the transformation of political representation in contemporary Indonesia to argue the need to better understand how political representatives use claims to engage in storytelling about themselves and the community they represent. By adopting a new approach that focuses on the ...
By Delphine Alles
June 28, 2018
The past fifteen years have seen Indonesia move away from authoritarianism to a thriving yet imperfect democracy. During this time, the archipelago attracted international attention as the most-populated Muslim-majority country in the world. As religious issues and actors have been increasingly ...
By Jess Melvin
February 02, 2018
For the past half century, the Indonesian military has depicted the 1965-66 killings, which resulted in the murder of approximately one million unarmed civilians, as the outcome of a spontaneous uprising. This formulation not only denied military agency behind the killings, it also denied that the ...
By Gerard Clarke
May 18, 2017
Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research, this book provides a path-breaking account of civil society in the Philippines. It challenges the widespread belief in political science and development studies literature that civil society in developing countries is an institutional arena in which...
By Phansasiri Kularb
February 12, 2016
Since 2004, Thailand’s southern border provinces have been plagued by violence. There are a wide array of explanations for this violence, from the revival of Malay nationalist movements and the influence from the global trend of radical Islam, to the power play among the regional underground crime ...
By Jun Honna
March 21, 2003
The military have had a key role to play in Indonesia's recent history and may well have a decisive role to play in her future. This book looks at the role of the military in the downfall of Suharto and their ongoing influence on the succeeding governments of B.J. Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid. The...
By David Streckfuss
September 27, 2010
Since 2005, Thailand has been in crisis, with unprecedented political instability and the worst political violence seen in the country in decades. In the aftermath of a military coup in 2006, Thailand’s press freedom ranking plunged, while arrests for lèse-majesté have skyrocketed to levels unknown...
By Claudio Delang
September 10, 2010
The Karen are one of the major ethnic minority groups in the Himalayan highlands, living predominantly in the border area between Thailand and Burma. As the largest ethnic minority in Thailand, they have often been in conflict with the Thai majority. This book is the first major ethnographic and ...
By Adam D. Tyson
July 02, 2010
This book examines the dynamic process of political transition and indigenous (adat) revival in newly decentralized Indonesia. The political transition in May 1998 set the stage for the passing of Indonesia’s framework decentralization laws. These laws include both political and technocratic ...
By Glen Lewis
February 16, 2006
Written by an established expert on Thailand, this is one of the first books to fully investigate the Thai media’s role during the Thaksin government’s first term. Incorporating political economy and media theory, the book provides a unique insight into globalization in Southeast Asia, analyzing ...