New Mandala

Berghahn Books has recently released an edited collection titled Centering the Margin: Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands (thanks to David for the tip!).   
Edited by Alexander Horstmann (page in German) and Reed Wadley, the book’s promotional material argues that its “completely new approach to borders and border crossing…suggests a re-conceptualization of the nation in Southeast Asia.”
Exciting stuff. 
While I [...]

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Over the last few decades Southeast Asia has been hit by a deluge of international consultants preaching the gospel of integrated water resource management. Many of these consultants (who enlighten the locals with best-practice ideas like “catchment”, “stakeholder” and “participation”) seem unaware of the hydraulic base of many of the region’s traditional polities. Nor do many seem [...]

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Hearing taxi-drivers in Bangkok hurl derogatory remarks at Arab tourists visiting their city, I often get the impression that they want me to join in.  “Arabs are”, one taxi-driver told me, “easy people to have as enemies.  They are not good people”.   
It doesn’t help that in many Thai eyes, Arabs – and many Muslims and South [...]

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