Constituting the Minangkabau


Book Description

This account of culture and society in the villages of West Sumatra, Indonesia, during the period of Dutch colonialism is based on materials collected from the colonial archives, local Indonesian newspapers and recent fieldwork in Malaysia and Indonesia. The author argues that the impact of colonial land-grabbing and political control led to the formation of a peasant economy in the period. At the same time, the author tackles issues in the recent anthropological debates about ethnography and culture to argue that this period also witnessed the construction of what we now call 'Minangkabau Culture' - a process that involved western ethnographers, colonial officials and Minangkabau intellectuals in an often conflicted process of modern cultural transformation.




Essays into Vietnamese Pasts


Book Description

Essays that demonstrate ways to "read" the pasts of Vietnam through detailed analyses of its art, chronicles, legends, documents, and monuments. The book's many voices undermine the idea of a single Vietnamese past. All the essays, while varied, are connected by their common concerns with language and text.




Young Heroes


Book Description

An exploration of the family as a cultural, historical, and political construction in New Order Indonesia. The linkage of family life to politics was an integral part of Suharto's New Order ideology. With extensive fieldwork and research into education, family dynamics, politics, and the media, Shiraishi's work presents an in-depth view of the intricacies of Indonesian society.




Making Indonesia


Book Description

Dedicated to George McT. Kahin, this collection examines the genesis and evolution of the modern Indonesian nation-state. Essay topics range from the nation's imaginative conception to the Suharto government's political and financial infrastructure. Contributors include F.P. Bunnell, R. McVey, T. Shiraishi, and B. R. O'G. Anderson.




Interpreting Development


Book Description

A study of rapid capitalist development in Thailand and the rivalries generated not only between the older bureaucracy and the newer, rising entrepreneurial elite, but also between urban and rural entrepreneurs. Girling explores the classic problems associated with capitalism and democracy, the dangers and exhilaration of nationalist sentiment, the contradictions inherent in Thai development, and the rise of the middle class. His work is a fascinating reconsideration of problems that have faced many theorists.




Environmental Challenges in South-East Asia


Book Description

This volume discusses environmental change, natural resource exploitation and the prospect for ecological sustainability in Southeast Asia. The contributors including sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, economists, political economists and historians, presents the findings of recent archival and field research mainly from ongoing programmes of team research based in European universities and institutes. Among the themes discussed are European and indigenous perceptions of the environment; historical processes of environmental change; the politics of resource use; ecotourism and development; deforestation and smallholding land-use strategies; migration and environmental degradation; disease environment and human geography; demography, sustainability and resource exploitation.




No Other Road to Take


Book Description

Now in its seventh printing!The memoir of a woman whose strength, courage, and intelligence had a profound impact on Vietnamese history. Not simply a participant in the Viet Minh resistance against the French, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Dinh was also an active leader who organized the uprising in Ben Tre province against the Diem regime, was appointed to the leadership committee of the National Liberation Front (NLF), and seved as Chairman of the South Vietnam Women's Liberation Association. The oppressive policies of Diem and the problems of civil war and American involvement are described with powerful immediacy-effectively illustrating the patriotic fervor and determination of those she fought with and helped lead.




Violence and the State in Suharto's Indonesia


Book Description

These essays investigate institutionalized violence in New Order Indonesia and the ongoing legacy Suharto's dictatorship has conferred on the nation. The collection includes papers on East Timor, Aceh, Biak, the police, and the Indonesian military, among other topics.




A Man Like Him


Book Description

The story of eight years in the brief life of Journal Kyaw U Chit Maung, a courageous Burmese journalist and editor. His political analyses helped guide the nation during a turbulent era marked by internal struggles to establish a democracy independent of Britain in the late 1930s and the Japanese Occupation of the 1940s. The memoir is written by U Chit Maung's wife, Journal Kyaw Ma Ma Lay, a resilient woman whose deep admiration and love for her uncompromising husband are captured here.




Gangsters, Democracy, and the State in Southeast Asia


Book Description

An essay collection that studies workaday, regional politics in Southeast Asia and its implications for evolving democracies. The contributors examine the electoral process, conflicts between central and local governments, conflicts between individual freedoms and state power, and the roles charismatic, opportunistic strongmen have played in Southeast Asian politics, most notably in Thailand, Burma, and the Philippines.