Southeast Asia (Regional)

#64   Gold in Early Southeast Asia: Selected Papers from the Symposium Gold in Southeast Asia, Yale University Art Gallery, 13-14 May 2011
Edited by Ruth Barnes, Emma Natalya Stein and Benjamin Diebold. 289pp. (April 2015).
Cloth $40.00; paper $29.00
   In 2011 the Yale University Art Gallery displayed key items from the Valerie and Hunter Thompson Collection of Javanese gold, recently donated to the newly inaugurated Indo-Pacific Gallery. The symposium celebrating the exhibit included contributions representing a range of disciplines, from archaeology to art history and epigraphy. New approaches to analysis are offered and enrich understanding of the role precious metal once held in Southeast Asian cultures. Recently discovered archaeological sites are discussed. Several of the authors also address the problems of looting and forgery when objects become desirable collectors' items. This collection of essays marks a new stage in research on precious metals in Southeast Asia (includes 122 b/w illustrations).
    Reviewers' Comments: "The book provides the scholar and interested reader with a broad range of topics, various approaches, and with detailed insight . . . delivers an important contribution for discussions on cultural heritage and its preservation . . . The comprehensive bibliography also provides a useful source for scholars and readers. I recommend this book as an enriching collection of a broad range of approaches to the precious topic of gold in early Southeast Asia." - Lydia Kieven (Bijdragen tot- Taal -Land en Volkenkunde 2017)

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#60   Anarchic Solidarity: Autonomy, Equality, and Fellowship in Southeast Asia, edited by Thomas Gibson and Kenneth Sillander. 310 pp., (2011) $38.00 cloth; $27.00 paper.
    This volume analyzes a group of Southeast Asian societies that have in common a mode of sociality that maximizes personal autonomy, political egalitarianism, and inclusive forms of social solidarity. Their members make their livings as nomadic hunter-gatherers, shifting cultivators, sea nomads, and peasants embedded in market economies. While political anarchy and radical equality appear in many societies as utopian ideals, these societies provide examples of actually existing, viable forms of "anarchy." The book documents the mechanisms that enable these societies to maintain their life-ways and suggests some moral and political lessons that those who appreciate them might apply to their own societies.
    Reviewers' Comments: "This collection marks an epochal leap in anthropological studies of egalitarianism...... should become a model for future research." - David Graeber

"....Unsurpassed and bound to be influential far beyond regional studies." - James C. Scott

"...Theoretically reflective and rich in ethnographic details, the volume provides a solid foundation for further research on social solidarity and small-scale societies. ....may bring back the idea of comparative ethnography that Clifford Geertz initiated five decades ago in the core of anthropological analysis." - Sirojuddin Ari, INDONESIA 93 (April 2012)
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#54   Conserving Nature in Culture: Case Studies from Southeast Asia, edited by Michael R. Dove, Percy E. Sajise and Amity Doolittle. 368 pp., (2005) $38.00 cloth; $27.00 paper.
    This volume presents the results of an international, multi-year, collaborative project that focused on Southeast Asia and was designed to transcend orthodox thinking about environmental conservation. In documenting the way that many societies conserve resources in the course of everyday activities, the contributions to this volume question formal, state-led conservation interventions. The planned character of such interventions reintroduces and is often doomed by the vision of a dichotomy between society and environment. The contributions to this volume show how the views of Northern and Southern scholars, of natural scientists and social scientists, can converge on many of these issues but still differ.
    Reviewers' Comments: "...much needed conclusions...solid research....anyone working on similar topics....will find much that is useful in this work, particularly as we begin to deal with the 'new' international development agenda on 'poverty and conservation'." -Reed L. Wadley
    "....The authors seek to reverse the principal conservation paradigm prevalent today, which focuses on the social factors that threaten conservation. Rather, in a refreshing and innovative approach, more emphasis is placed on how social factors support conservation." -Jacob B. Cliff
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#52    Founders' Cults in Southeast Asia: Ancestors, Polity, and Identity,
edited by Nicola Tannenbaum and Cornelia Ann Kammerer. 376 pp., (2003). $37.00 cloth; $25.00 paper.
     Drawing on ethnographic and comparative inquiry, ten anthropologists explore the founders' cults throughout Southeast Asia. Typically, founders' cults are based on a contract between the original founders of a settlement and the spirit owners of territory cleared for human use. Because these cults are about a group's relationship to a particular place, they reflect local political, historical, and religious changes....including responses to European colonialism; world religions, national integration, and the penetration of global capitalism. This volume is important because it incorporates both mainland and island Southeast Asia and integrates upland and lowland materials.
  Reviewers' Comments: "...advance(s) the goal of an anthropology of complex systems by making available ethnographic detail alongside interpretation." - Paul Durrenberger

#47 Merchants and Migrants: Ethnicity and Trade among Yunnanese Chinese in Southeast Asia,
by Ann Maxwell Hill. 178 pp., (1998). $32.00 cloth; $20.00 paper
This work on the Yunnanese Chinese and premodern caravan trade illumines hitherto unexplored corners of Southeast Asian history and ethnography. Hill demonstrates how ethnic identities change in response to both the process of localization and the larger structures of state, region, and their economies.
Reviewers Comments: "...fascinating and original....a welcome addition to the study of the Chinese diaspora, both from an historical and an anthropological perspective. With this book, Yale Southeast Asia Studies series has continued its generally high standard." - C. Dobbin

#46 Indigenous Peoples and the State: Politics, Land and Ethnicity in the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo, edited by Robert L. Winzeler. 316 pp. (1998). Cloth $35.00; paper $22.00.
Ten essays explore the differences and similarities among various indigenous minorities of the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo. All concern the relationshop between indigenous groups and large societies as defined by the state.
Reviewers Comments: "...should interest anyone concerned about minority and ethnic issues in Southeast Asia...most (of the authors) write with sympathy about the peoples they have studied and respected for years, and whose traditional cultures and lifestyles they see threatened..." -C. A. Lockard
Available on Amazon.com
(and in Europe, Japan and Canada on Amazon.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .jp, .ca)

#45 Merit and Blessing in Mainland Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective, edited by Cornelia Ann Kammerer and Nicola Tannenbaum. 280 pp. (1997). Cloth $32.00; paper $20.00.
Through ethnographic and comparative inquiry, nine anthropologists and one historian examine the ideological and social dimensions of merit and blessing in the Southeast Asian mainland.
Reviewers Comments: "The collection....offers useful and at times provocative insights...while leaving room for healthy debate...concerning the differences and similarities that divide and link the region's diverse societies and peoples." -M.B. Mills
"...of interest to scholars ...for its fine-grained ethnographic case studies, and for ...the refinement of theoretical understanding of these societies and their social and religious practices." - J. DeBernardi

#39     International Commercial Rivalry in Southeast Asia in the Interwar Period, Edited by Shinya Sugiyama and Milagros C. Guerrero. 222 pp. (1994). Cloth $30.00; paper $17.00.
   A collection of eight essays examining the international economic rivalry in Southeast Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. Evaluates the significance of Japan's expansion into the area.
   Reviewers' Comments: "The essays...are well written...well recommended to specialists in Japanese and/or Southeast Asian economic history." -D. Feeny

#36      Reshaping Local Worlds: Formal Education and Cultural Change in Rural Southeast Asia.
Edited by Charles F. Keyes with Jane Keyes and Nancy Donnelly. viii, 220 pp. (1991). Cloth $27.00; paper $16.00
   Seven articles discuss the transformations of local worlds which have ensued since the introduction of state schools in Java, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
   Reviewers' Comments:   ". . .unusually coherent compilation....unique in its regional focus on rural education as an instrument of culture change in `modernizing' nations."    -Journal of Asian Studies

#22      Southeast Asia Under Japanese Occupation, by Alfred W. McCoy. vi, 250 pp., (1980). $14.00
   Introduction and compilation of scholarly essays on five countries, which reassess the transformation thesis of the wartime period (the "Japanese interregnum") previously elaborated upon by Harry J. Benda and others.
   Reviewers' Comments: "...nine excellent essays...uniformly good...allows the reader to identify both the distinctive as well as the similar forces that thrust these countries into independence." -Benedict R. Anderson