New Mandala

Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I write in my capacity as newly appointed book review editor for the Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Studies Group and New Mandala. I am grateful to Justin McDaniel and Andrew Walker for both conceiving of an ambitious effort to commission and make available on-line reviews of new scholarship on Mainland Southeast Asia and for offering [...]

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A review of Yos Santasombat (2008), Flexible Peasants: Reconceptualizing the Third World’s Rural Types. RCSD, Chiang Mai University.

[This review appeared recently in Chiang Mai University's Sangkhomsat, 20 (2).]
Like many scholars who study contemporary rural society, Yos Santasombat is seeking to define a new type of peasantry. The challenge appears formidable, not the least because, as [...]

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Wassana Nanuam, Lap luang phrang phak phitsadan [Secrets, Trickery, and Camouflage: The Improbable Phenomena]. Bangkok, Post Books, 2009. 303 pp. In Thai.
Soldiers, guns and coups have played a big role in Thailand’s politics for centuries. Historians think that the Front Palace incident in 1874 early in the reign of the fifth Bangkok king was actually [...]

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Back in September we announced that the Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Studies Group and New Mandala were seeking a Book Review Editor for a new initiative that will offer regular book reviews of important new texts (in English and other languages) about mainland Southeast Asia. We received some excellent applications and would like to thank all of you who applied.
It give us great [...]

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I have recently finished reading Volume 3 of a wonderful Thai studies trilogy.
Volume 1 Nation, was published in 1994. It is a forensic account of the construction of one of the core symbols of modern Thailand’s nationhood.
It was a long wait until Volume 2, King, emerged in 2006. But the wait was worth it. The author risked all [...]

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The Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Studies Group and New Mandala are planning a new initiative that will offer regular book reviews of important new texts (in English and other languages) on mainland Southeast Asia. The reviews will be jointly published on the TLC email list and on New Mandala. This will give authors, publishers and reviewers a very [...]

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There have been a few recent reviews of Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand, which I wrote with Tim Forsyth of the London School of Economics. Here are some of the critical highlights …
… from Phil Hirsch’s review:
There is much that is exciting and refreshing in this book. Any [...]

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Robert H. Taylor, The State in Myanmar. London, Hurst & Company, 2009. xxv+555.
This book is a new edition of The State in Burma, originally published in 1987 and thought by many to be the most comprehensive account of Burma in the quarter century after Ne Win seized power in 1962. Taylor is a political scientist [...]

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[This post is an introductory comment to Doug Miles' detailed review of Hjorleifur Jonsson's Mien Relations: Mountain People and State Control in Thailand. The full review is available here.]
“Now where did I leave my jolly pith helmet?”
I commend this book for initiating a shift of paradigm in research concerning the Yao of southern China and the [...]

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Review of Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand, Duncan McCargo, Cornell University Press 2008
Duncan McCargo’s recent study, Tearing Apart the Land, sets itself apart from other ‘political studies’ on the troubling Thai ‘deep south’. Based on empirical data, the book brings a breath of fresh air; it at least shows the [...]

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