New Mandala

The National Library of Australia is currently acquiring copies of the Burma Law Reports (BLR) and Myanmar Law Reports (MLR) from 1948 to the present. The BLR running to 1962 contain Supreme Court and High Court rulings. From 1962 to 1973 they variously contain Chief Court rulings, Court-Martial Appeal Court rulings and Special Criminal Courts’ [...]

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Recently our article “Northern Thailand’s Specter of Eviction” was published by Critical Asian Studies (40:3, 373-398).  In that piece we discussed the evidence of village evictions in northern Thailand.   This is, as we point out, an enduring theme in academic and activist writings across the region.  However we found that the strong emphasis on evictions is not supported [...]

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Underlying the heated political and academic debates on forest policies in Thailand are the following assumptions: (1) the area under forest cover is continuously declining and threat of further deforestation is high, especially in the highlands of the North; (2) deforestation poses serious problems; and consequently (3) more should be done to conserve and rehabilitate [...]

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Amnat phunthi lae attalak thang chatphan: kanmuang watthanatham khong rat chat nai sangkhom thai 2 (Power, space and ethnic identity: cultural politics  of the nation state in Thai society) (2008) by Yot Santasombat et al (ISBN: 9789740541387). Published by the Princess Sirinthorn Anthropology Center, this 339 page volume is the result of field work by a new generation of [...]

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For about half a century, northern Thailand’s Royal Projects have been a frontier institution transforming the agrarian landscape through various “hill tribe” development schemes. This institution has been established not only through development/humanitarian processes, but also through political processes to the extent that popular (and academic) discourses seem to have been limited to representing the [...]

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Khwamsamphan chao muang nua lang kap thahan yipun samai songkhram lok khrang thi 2 (Relations Between Residents of the Lower North of Thailand and the Japanese Army During World War 2)  (2007) by Jiriporn Stapanawatana (ISBN: 9789749939550). The author studied history at Monash University. The present work reflects research in 2006 and 2007 at Naresuan University in Phitsanulok. Although [...]

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A scientific team, consisting of members of the Gibbon Conservation Alliance based at Zurich University and the Kunming Institute of Zoology, as well as staff members of the Nangunhe National Nature Reserve, carried out a survey in all Chinese forests reported to support white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) during the last 20 years.
The species was last [...]

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In my last post I discussed the decline of Chiang Khong’s Wat Luang port and the Wat Luang Boat Operators’ Association. How can we understand such change in the context of the subregional development of river trade? First, the large long-distance Lao cargo boats that cross the river to load at Chiang Khong do [...]

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In The Legend of the Golden Boat, Andrew Walker spends a whole chapter talking about the significance of a small local port in Chiang Khong district of Chiang Rai (Thailand) in relation to its local authority in the Lao long-distance river trading regime. Standing at the Wat Luang port, Walker revealed the active role of [...]

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Over the last three years, northern Laos has been seized by a rubber fever unknown in the agricultural history of the country. Rubber, initially introduced by Lao farmers from China through a well-knit trans-border network of kin and friends, has been promoted by the Lao government as a miraculous antidote that will rescue thousand of [...]

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