Episodes

  • Joshua Barker, "State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City" (Duke UP, 2024)

    Joshua Barker, "State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City" (Duke UP, 2024)
    Feb 16 2025
    The relationship between fear people experience in their lives and the government often informs key questions about the rule of law and justice. In nations where the rule of law is unevenly applied, interpreting the people involved in its enforcement allows for contextualized understanding about why that unevenness occurs and is perpetuated. Joshua Barker’s State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City published by Duke University Press (2024) examines policing in Bandung, the capital city of the province of West Java in Indonesia, to show how fear and violence are produced and reproduced. He makes analysis of the emergence of informal and formal forms of political order in Bandung based on ethnographic and historical evidence about neighborhood watch groups, street-level toughs, vigilantes, and people in the police, from clerks to officers. This book provides a compelling interpretive framework for understanding episodes of violence and different forms of authority in Indonesian state-society relations as it does for many other parts of the world where unresolved colonial legacies shape the production of policing. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    57 mins
  • Agricultural and Resource Economics in Vietnam

    Agricultural and Resource Economics in Vietnam
    Feb 13 2025
    Agriculture remains a key sector of the economies of most Southeast Asian countries. It is supposed to provide nutritious, affordable, accessible and safe food to the people of SE Asia, and livelihood to more than 400 million farmers across the region. How is agriculture affected by climate change, and how can farmers cope with it? What is the relationship between farming and renewable energy installations, which require large land areas to be developed and thus encroach on agriculture? How to best manage water resources needed for farming, but threatened by climate change, and by pollution that often comes from farming? To discuss the challenges posed by climate change, the role of adaptation, food safety issues, and the importance of effective institutions and policies in supporting and guiding agriculture in Southeast Asia, Tiho Ancev, Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the School of Economics, USYD, joins the podcast. He is SSEAC’s Vietnam Country Convenor, a member of SSEAC’s executive, and member of the executive of Sydney Vietnam Academic Network (SVAN). His research interests are in the economics of climate change, the economics of agricultural policy, and the economics of water, energy, and the environment Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    23 mins
  • Bertil Lintner, "The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Bertil Lintner, "The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Feb 13 2025
    Four years ago, on Feb. 1 2021, the Burmese military overthrew the fledgling democratic government in the Southeast Asian country of Burma, officially known as Myanmar. That sparked a civil war that continues today–with neither the military junta nor the various rebel groups coming closer to victory. How did the country get here? Veteran Asia journalist Bertil Lintner tackles the country’s history since independence, including the military’s long involvement in the country’s politics, in his book The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar (Hurst: 2024). He joins today to talk about Burma’s history, the role of the military, China’s involvement in the country, and prospects for the civil war going forward. Bertil Lintner is an acclaimed journalist and expert on contemporary Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar. Formerly the Far Eastern Economic Review’s Burma correspondent, he is now a full-time correspondent with the Asia Pacific Media Services and writes regularly for Asia Times, The Irrawaddy and other regional and international websites and publications. Lintner has written 25 books on Asian politics and history, including Outrage: Burma's Struggle for Democracy (Review Publishing: 1989); Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier (Yale University Press: 2015); and The Costliest Pearl: China’s Struggle for India’s Ocean (Hurst: 2019). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Golden Land Ablaze. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    48 mins
  • Magic, Death, and Necromancy with Justin McDaniel

    Magic, Death, and Necromancy with Justin McDaniel
    Feb 5 2025
    **Warning: This episode contains potentially disturbing content!** On this episode of the Black Beryl, I sit down with Justin McDaniel, a scholar of Theravada Buddhist literature and art. Together we explore the darker side of Thai Buddhism, including meditation on decomposing bodies, fetus spirits, corpse oil, and the spectrum of white and black magic. We discuss the logics of rituals, their role in Thai communities, and how a misfit Catholic punk from Philly found himself in a rural Thai monastery. If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in deep conversations about the dark side of Asian religions and medicines, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out our members-only benefits on Substack.com. Enjoy the show! Resources mentioned in this episode: Thai movie Necromancer (2005) Justin McDaniel, The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand (2011) Justin McDaniel, Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks (2018) Justin McDaniel, Wayward Distractions: Ornament, Emotion, Zombies and the Study of Buddhism in Thailand (2021) Justin McDaniel, Cosmologies and Biologies: Illuminated Siamese Manuscripts of Death, Time and the Body (2024) Press coverage of monasticism course Press coverage of existential despair course Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    59 mins
  • Talking Thai Politics: Chanintorn Pensute, The Cost of Politics in Thailand

    Talking Thai Politics: Chanintorn Pensute, The Cost of Politics in Thailand
    Jan 27 2025
    How much does it cost to become an MP in Thailand? Is entering parliamentary politics prohibitively expensive for ordinary people? Has the rise of the Move Forward Party (now the People’s Party) changed the landscape as regards candidate selection and campaign finance? Or do well-connected members of local political dynasties still exert a dominant role in determining who enters parliament? In this podcast, Chanintorn Pensute, an associate professor in the Faculty of Political Science at Chiang Mai University, talks about a fascinating report she recently co-authored (with Pailin Phujeenaphan, an associate professor and Dean at the same Faculty) for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, entitled The Cost of Politics in Thailand. Chanintorn Pensute works mainly on electoral politics in Thailand, and gained her PhD from the University of Leeds. Her articles have appeared in Contemporary Southeast Asia and other journals. Duncan McCargo is President’s Chair in Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University. Talking Thai Politics brings crafted conversations about the politics of Thailand to a global audience. Created by the Generation Thailand project at Nanyang Technological University, the podcast is co-hosted by Duncan McCargo and Chayata Sripanich. Our production assistant is Li Xinruo. Talking Thai Politics Website Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    31 mins
  • Book Chat: The Life Story of Father Nguyễn, a Vietnamese Refugee Who Migrated to Taiwan, with Lin Shu-fen

    Book Chat: The Life Story of Father Nguyễn, a Vietnamese Refugee Who Migrated to Taiwan, with Lin Shu-fen
    Jan 26 2025
    In this podcast, the host, Lara Momesso, introduces a book she co-edited with Dr Polina Ivanova (University of Bremen) titled Refugees and Asylum Seekers in East Asia: Perspective from Japan and Taiwan (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024), and she interviews one of the authors of the book, Dr Shu-fen Lin, at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. In this chat, Shu-fen Lin explores the life story of a Vietnamese refugee, Father Nguyễn Văn Hùng, who escaped Vietnam via boat in the late 1970s and arrived in Japan, and then went to Australia and, eventually, Taiwan. The story of Father Nguyễn Văn Hùng intersects with the immigration and refugee policies of Japan, Australia and Taiwan, his fight for justice in Taiwan as well as Vietnam, and his future ambitions and goals. For those who are interested to know more about this conversation, here you can find the link of the book and here the link of the specific chapter. The book is available open access, so feel free to share it with your network! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    37 mins
  • Katharine E. McGregor, "Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)

    Katharine E. McGregor, "Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
    Jan 19 2025
    The system of prostitution imposed and enforced by the Japanese military during its wartime occupation of several countries in East and Southeast Asia is today well-known and uniformly condemned. Transnational activist movements have sought to recognize and redress survivors of this World War II-era system, euphemistically known as "comfort women," for decades, with a major wave beginning in the 1990s. However, Indonesian survivors, and even the system's history in Indonesia to begin with, have largely been sidelined, even within the country itself. In Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia (U Wisconsin Press, 2023), Katharine E. McGregor not only untangles the history of the system during the war, but also unpacks the context surrounding the slow and faltering efforts to address it. With careful attention to the historical, social, and political conditions surrounding sexual violence in Indonesia, supported by exhaustive research and archival diligence, she uncovers a critical piece of Indonesian history and the ongoing efforts to bring it to the public eye. Critically, she establishes that the transnational part of activism surrounding victims of the system is both necessary and fraught, a complexity of geopolitics and international relationships on one hand and a question of personal networks, linguistic differences, and cultural challenges on the other. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    49 mins
  • Adrian de Leon, "Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America" (UNC Press, 2023)

    Adrian de Leon, "Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America" (UNC Press, 2023)
    Jan 11 2025
    In a book that pulls together both sides of the Pacific, Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America (UNC Press, 2023) asks the question: what if we look at Filipino history not from the cities or the imperial metropoles, but from the mountains and the countryside? Or put another way, from the "bundok," the Tagalog word for "mountain" which American soliders in the late 19th century would come to use as a catachall for the places they found themselves fighting imperial wars. In Bundok, NYU history and FIlipino Studies professor Adrian De Leon tracks both the movement of European and American colonizers into the archipeligo, as well as how people and images moved beyond the islands and into the wider Pacific world, and how these pictures and these emigres shaped ideas about civilization, savagery, and the nature of Filipine identity itself. In a book that traces pathways from the mountains of Luzon to the mountains of South Dakota, De Leon demonstrates how the American West has always been a transnational space. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    1 hr and 16 mins