Book Reviews
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Review of Ideal Man
24 May 2013 9:12 AM | No CommentsNew Mandala book review editor Michael Montesano reviews this new work on a key figure in Southeast Asian history.
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Review of Misalliance
17 May 2013 1:00 PM | 2 CommentsKeith Weller Taylor argues that this new book is thoughtful, lucid, original, analytical, and readable
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Review of Thailand’s Hidden Workforce
05 April 2013 9:15 AM | 3 CommentsInga Gruß reviews a book about the work conditions of Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand at this time of immense change.
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Review of Gender, Emotions and Labour Markets
21 February 2013 9:10 AM | 1 CommentSri Ranjani Mei Hua reviews a book dealing with experiences of women in Southeast Asia.
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Review of Authority of Influence
06 January 2013 5:31 AM | 3 CommentsScholarly treatments of gender in Myanmar, past or present, remain scarce. Jessica Harriden’s book thus fills a gap in our understanding of an important and controversial topic.
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Review of The King in Exile
04 December 2012 8:35 AM | 4 CommentsDonald M. Seekins argues that this book is the story of a dynasty that belongs truly to Burma’s past.
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Review of Buddhist Fury
13 November 2012 7:57 AM | 21 CommentsThis book explores the relationship between religion and violence in far southern Thailand, where Buddhist monks are a marginalized local minority.
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Review of Revisiting Rural Places
30 October 2012 7:54 AM | 2 CommentsRevisiting Rural Places should become an essential reference text for researchers who work on social, cultural, political and economic change in Asia.
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Review of The Institutional Imperative
16 October 2012 7:00 AM | 9 CommentsDe-agrarianisation often isn’t very pretty, but economic disparity may well be the price to be paid for pursuing it as slowly as Thailand has over the past 50 years.
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Review of Imagining Gay Paradise
09 October 2012 6:55 AM | 2 CommentsThe creation of make-shift, idiosyncratic queer paradises provides shelter, community, and belonging for many who have refused to fit into standard narratives of Southeast Asia.
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Review of The Fate of Rural Hell
12 September 2012 7:56 AM | 6 CommentsThe models of eroticism and faith in the Hell Garden have been left behind by the robust urban bourgeois consumerist culture increasingly prominent across contemporary Thai society.
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Review of Revolution Interrupted
24 July 2012 11:46 AM | 6 CommentsQuestioning received notions of revolution, this book offers a passionate and rigorous reconsideration of the period in Thailand between October 1973 and October 1976.
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Review of Land and Loyalty
17 July 2012 9:18 AM | 9 Comments
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Review of The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk
11 July 2012 3:44 PM | 9 Comments
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Review of Saying the Unsayable
19 June 2012 6:27 AM | 19 Comments
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Thailand’s Political Peasants
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The benefits of contract farming
Posted on 4 October 2012 | 9 CommentsContract farming has a bad reputation, often being associated with the proletarianisation of vulnerable small holders. But this isn't always the case and contract farming can make a valuable contribution to agricultural diversification. -
The power of spirits
Posted on 10 September 2012 | 52 CommentsExploring the ritual relationships between the social and supernatural domains can help us understand the way in which power is drawn into the day-to-day worlds of livelihood, aspiration, and ambition. -
Chris Baker on Thailand’s Political Peasants
Posted on 6 September 2012 | 15 CommentsWhile Thai villagers were once believed to be remote from politics, and some imagine that still to be true, Walker is bent on exploding that notion for ever. -
Middle-income peasant economy
Posted on 28 August 2012 | No CommentsThe state has become a very important source of income, but state expenditure has done little to produce more productive forms of economic activity. -
Peasants and productivity
Posted on 19 August 2012 | 6 CommentsThe main challenge for Thailand's agriculture—its relatively low labor productivity—arises from the persistence of an agricultural peasantry, not its disappearance. -
Peasant political society
Posted on 3 August 2012 | 11 CommentsA new form of "political society" has emerged based on the productive interaction between peasant culture and the governing practices of the modern state. -
Thailand’s Political Peasants
Posted on 29 July 2012 | 19 CommentsRural Thailand's new "political society" is energized by a fundamental desire to be productively connected to sources of power.