Journal of Southeast Asian Studies articles from September 1998

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies archives from September 1998

Population in Asia.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By WARREN C. SANDERSON and JEE-PENG TAN. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1995. Pp. xvii, 243. Tables, References, Figures. This in-depth study covers a plethora of topics on population policy (mainly interventionist) and anti-natalist...

Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia: The Quest for Moral Authority.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by MUTHIAH ALAGAPPA. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. Pp. xiv, 446. Bibliography, Index. This is a collection of essays originally conceived by the editor at Columbia University and later worked out in two separate...

The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming, Business Elites and the Emergence of the Modern State in Southeast Asia.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by JOHN BUTCHER and HOWARD DICK. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. Pp. xviii, 309. Figures, Maps, Tables, Bibliography, Index. Books on the overseas Chinese business community continue to pour from the presses, both popular and...

L'Asie du Sud-Est Face la Mondialisation: Les Nouveaux Champs d'Analyse. Southeast Asia and Globalization: News [sic] Domains of Analysis.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by RODOLPHE DE KONINCK and CHRISTINE VEILLEUX. Quebec: Universite Laval, Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches sur l'Asie Contemporaine, 1997. Pp. 206. [Partly in French, partly in English] "For the first time in almost five centuries...

Southeast Asia's Misunderstood Miracle: Industrial Policy and Economic Development in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By JOMO K.S. et al. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997. Pp. xiv, 196. Glossary, Tables, Chart, Bibliography, Index. To some extent this book represents old ideas - it is pre-Crisis. The Acknowledgments section indicates that much of the book was...

Le Sel de la Vie en Asie de Sud-Est.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by PIERRE LE ROUX and JACQUES IVANOFF. Patani: Prince of Songkla University and Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1993. Pp. 437. Maps, Tables, Photographs, Figures, Bibliographies. [In French and English] The...

The Voice of Young Burma.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By AYE KYAW. Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1993. Pp. 92. Bibliography. Unfortunately, studies of Burmese politics and of modem Burmese history have often stressed the continuities between pre- and post-colonial Burmese...

Burmese Manuscripts, Part 3.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by HEINZ BECHERT. Compiled by HEINZ BRAUN with the assistance of ANNE PETERS, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996. Pp. xxx, 476. Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, Vol. 23, Pt. 3. It took the editors...

The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB).(Review)
September 1, 1998... By BERTIL LINTNER. Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1990. Pp. xii, 111. Maps, Photographs, Appendices, List of Abbreviations. Thankfully, we have before us an unusually effective study of the Communist Party of Burma...

Cambodian Culture Since 1975: Homeland and Exile.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by MAY M. EBIHARA, CAROL A. MORTLAND and JUDY LEDGERWOOD. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi, 194. References, Index. The book is a collection of essays edited by three American anthropologists who have...

Propaganda, Politics, and Violence in Cambodia: Democratic Transition Under United Nations Peace-Keeping.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by STEVEN HEDER and JUDY LEDGERWOOD. Armonk and London: ME. Sharpe, 1996. Pp. xx, 277. Map, Photographs, Appendix, Index. This volume is one of several studies dealing with the peace-keeping operation carried out by the United...

Spirits Captured in Stone. Shamanism and Traditional Medicine Among the Taman of Borneo.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By JAY H. BERNSTEIN. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiv, 209. Appendices, Bibliography, Index. This book describes the practices of shamanic healers called balien among the Taman, a community of some 4,500 Dayak swidden...

Classical Javanese Dance. The Surakarta Tradition and Its Terminology.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By CLARA BRAKEL-PAPENHUYZEN. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996. Pp. xii, 252. Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. The book under review testifies to the author's profound knowledge of classical Javanese. As stated in her Preface, the author has...

Survival and Profit in Rural Java: The Case of an East Javanese Village.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By SVEN CEDERROTH. Richmond: Curzon Press for Nordic Institute for Asian Studies, Monograph Series No. 63, 1995. Pp. xii, 301. Tables, Figures, References, Index. My offer to review this book (and I suspect your decision to read about it)...

Subud and the Javanese Mystical Tradition.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By ANTOON GEELS. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press Ltd and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 76, 1997. Pp. x, 262. Bibliography, Index. Subud (of the title) is one of a great many Javanese mystical movements which arose...

The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By JANET HOSKINS. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 [Paperback Reprint of 1993 Hardcover Edition]. Pp. xx, 414. Photographs, Maps, Tables, Bibliography, Index. It is easy to see why this book has won the acclaim that it has and...

M.H. Thamrin and His Quest for Indonesian Nationhood: 1917-1941.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By BOB HERlNG. Stein (Limburg): Edisi Khusus Kabar Seberang Sulating Maphilindo 26/27, 1996. Pp. x, 397. Maps, Photographs, Glossary, Index. This book is important but very difficult reading: important as it is the only biography of Moh....

Remaking Maluku: Social Transformation in Eastern Indonesia.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by DAVID MEARNS and CHRIS HEALEY. Darwin: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Territory University, Special Monograph No. 1, 1996. Pp. xiii, 185. Maps. The inviting title does not refer to the reinvention of Maluka Kie Raha...

Riding the Dutch Tiger. The Dutch East Indies Company and the Northeast Coast of Java: 1680-1743.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By LUC NAGTEGAAL. Leiden: KITLV Press, Verhandelingen van her Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- and Volkenkunde, Vol. 171, 1996. Pp. 250. Based on hitherto little-known documents of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Nagtegaal...

Japan, Indonesia and the War: Myths and Realities.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by PETER POST and ELLY TOUWEN-BOUWSMA. Leiden: KITLV Press, Verhandelingen van bet Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 173, 1997. Pp. xii, 214. Index. As the editors of this valuable new collection of papers on the...

Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by LAURIE J. SEARS. Durham: Duke University, 1996. Pp. xvi, 350. Bibliography, Index. Fantasizing the Feminine brings a number of the more recent developments within mainly western feminist theorising into a conversation with...

Central Pillars of the House. Sisters, Wives, and Mothers in a Rural Community in Minangkabau, West Sumatra.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By JOKE VAN REENEN. Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1996. Publications Vol. 45. Pp. xiv, 284. Appendices, Maps, References, Index. Despite the pioneering field research of Nancy Tanner in the 1960s, initially male scholars more or less...

Gentle Janus, Merchant Prince; The VOC and the Tightrope of Diplomacy in the Malay World, 1740-1800.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By REINOUT VOS. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1993. Pp. x11, 252. Maps, Appendices, Glossary, Abbreviations, Bibliography, Index. Revisionist history usually makes interesting reading, even if one does not always agree with the author's thesis. This...

Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, Deel XI 1743-1750.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by J.E. SCHOONEVELD-OOSTERLING. Den Haag: Rijks-Geschiedkundige Publicatien (R.G.P.) Grote Serie, vol. 232, Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 1997. Pp. xi, 949. Indexes. The present volume XI (1743-50) of the Missiven...

At War in the Shadow of Vietnam: U.S. Military Aid to the Royal Lao Government 1955-1975.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By TIMOTHY N. CASTLE. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Pp. 210. Bibliography, Index. Many of the books on the U.S. "secret war" in Laos which have appeared in the 1990s have been personal memoirs or journalistic accounts. Timothy...

Field, Forest, and Family: Women's Work and Power in Rural Laos.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By CAROL J. IRESON. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. Pp. xix, 286. Tables, Illustrations, Maps, Figures, Photos, Bibliography, Index. In Field, Forest and Family, Carol Ireson sheds new light on contemporary Laotian history through her...

Laos and the Hilltribes of Indochina: Journeys to the Boloven Plateau, From Bassac to Hue Through Laos, and to the Origins of the Thai.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By F.J. HARMAND. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1977. Pp. xxiv, 267. Illustrations. This recent addition to the White Lotus Historical Works in Translation series is a vivid account of an 1877 journey by Francois Jules Harmand, who enjoyed a triple...

Malaysia's Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Profits.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By EDMUND TERENCE GOMEZ and JOMO K.S. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xx, 207. Note on Currency, List of Abbreviations, Tables, Figures, Bibliography, Index. This book documents the characters, institutions, and many...

Kanganies in Sri Lanka and Malaysia: Tamil Recruiter-cum-Foreman as a Sociological Category in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By FRANK HEIDEMANN. Munich: Anacon, 1992. Pp. 110. Appendices, Glossary, Bibliography, Maps. The author of this concise monograph is to be congratulated for bringing to light the significant role of the labour recruiter-cum-foreman in the...

The Japanese Occupation of Malaya: 1941-1945.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By PAUL H. KRATOSKA. London: Hurst and Company, 1998. Pp. xxi, 404. Maps, Tables, Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. Many books recount the fall of Singapore, but what the Japanese then did with their prize has somehow always eluded a...

Visible Women in East Coast Malay Society: On the Reproduction of Gender in Ceremonial, School and Market.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By INGRID RUDIE. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press 1994. Pp xi, 337. Bibliography, Indexes. Scholarly, colonial, media and local discourses have all contributed - if not in fact at least in the imagination - to the widely-held view that...

Against the Sun: The AIF in Malaya, 1941-42.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By JANET UHR. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998. Pp. xiv, 252, Maps, Illustrations, Abbreviations, Bibliography, Index. In Against the Sun: The AIF in Malaya, 1941-42 Janet Uhr has set herself a bold task. She approaches the...

Urban Usurpation: From Friar Estates to Industrial Estates in a Philippine Hinterland.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By JOHN P. McANDREW. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi, 212. Tables, Figures, References, Index. The past several decades have seen explosive urban growth in many Southeast Asian countries. Primate cities such as...

Barangay. Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By WILLIAM HENRY SCOTT. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994. Pp. ix, 306. Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. This posthumously-published masterwork of the leading scholar of the pre-Spanish Philippines is a wonderful...

Historical Dictionary of the Philippines.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By ARTEMIO R. GUILLERMO and MAY KYI WIN. Lanham and London: Scarecrow Press, 1997. Pp. 40, 363. Maps, Appendices, Bibliography. This book is the twenty-fourth in a series of Asian/Oceanian historical dictionaries developed by Scarecrow...

Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By BENG-HUAT CHUA. London: Routledge, 1997. Pp. xiii, 237. References, Index. A problem with many books on Singapore is that they are often already dated by the time that they appear, and this one, just predating the most recent general...

Operation Matador: Britain's War Plans Against the Japanese 1918-1941.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By ONG CHIT CHUNG. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1997. Pp. xiv, 314. Maps, Photographs, Bibliography, Index. Can anything new be said about the Fall of Singapore? Especially by Ong Chit Chung's traditional-style account of British...

Contesting Space, Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By BRENDA S.A. YEOH. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xxiv, 351. Figures, Plates, Index. What a splendid book this is! Well-organized, well-written, wide-ranging - it truly illustrates the dictum of historian M.M. Postan,...

Shadows of Life: Nang Talung, Thai Popular Shadow Theatre.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By SVEN BROMAN. Bangkok: White Orchid Press, 1996. Pp. viii, 105. Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. The study of Southeast Asian shadow puppet theatre has long been dominated by the analysis of Javanese and Balinese genres. Thai shadow...

State Power and Culture in Thailand.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by E. PAUL DURRENBERGER. New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies Monograph 44, 1996. Pp. viii, 200. This edited volume comprising an introduction and six studies examines hegemonic Thai state behaviour and its reproduction through...

Political Economy of Environment in Thailand.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By PHILIP HIRSCH. Manila: Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1993. Pp. 168. Philip Hirsch is one of the world's foremost scholars writing on Thailand's environment. Over more than a decade he has published papers and books detailing the...

Seeing Forest for Trees: Environment and Environmentalism in Thailand.(Review)
September 1, 1998... Edited by PHILIP HIRSCH. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1996. Pp. 297, Index. Philip Hirsch is one of the world's foremost scholars writing on Thailand's environment. Over more than a decade he has published papers and books detailing the...

Understanding Vietnam.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By NEIL L. JAMIESON. Berkeley: University of California, 1993. Pp. 428. Bibliography, Index. As its title indicates, Neil Jamieson's Understanding Vietnam does not lack ambition. Not since Alexander Woodside's masterful Community and...

Monarchie et fait colonial.(Review)
September 1, 1998... By NGUYEN THE ANH. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1992. Pp. 311. Bibliography, Index. [In French] In Monarchie et fait colonial Nguyen The Anh traces the Nguyen Dynasty's steady decline beginning with Tu Duc's reign (1847-83) and the chaos that...

In memoriam: Dr R. Suntharalingam.(Obituary)
September 1, 1998... (18 October 1936 - 21 June 1998) Ramanathan Suntharalingam was born in the Malaysian state of Pahang. He graduated from the Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur in 1956, and then attended the University of Malaya in Singapore where he...

The medieval Tamil-language inscriptions in Southeast Asia and China.
September 1, 1998... Early inscriptions written in Indian languages and scripts abound in Southeast Asia. Literacy in the very early states of Southeast Asia - aside from the portion of north Vietnam annexed by China - began with the importing, by local rulers, of...

From Quanzhou to the Sulu zone and beyond: questions related to the early fourteenth century.
September 1, 1998... Introduction Ships sailing from Fujian to Southeast Asia could choose between two different sea routes. The first route followed the China coast to central Guangdong; it then led to Hainan, the Champa coast and Pulau Condore, an island...

Dissolving hegemony or changing trade pattern? Images of Srivijaya in the Chinese sources of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
September 1, 1998... Introduction The history of Srivijaya has been one of the most controversial subjects in premodern Southeast Asian history. Among the crucial issues in relation to this subject are the timing and cause of its decline and, in particular, to...

"The whole moon was eaten": Southeast Asian eclipse calculation.
September 1, 1998... One might classify earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as "natural disasters", whereas comets and eclipses might be described merely as "natural curiosities". In earlier times, however, all were equally frightening, signs that the gods were...

Bandits, banditry and landscapes of crime in the nineteenth-century Philippines.
September 1, 1998... With few exceptions, commentators agree that bandits were a major socio-economic phenomenon of the nineteenth-century Philippines.l Historians and contemporary observers are united in lamenting the deplorable state to which the countryside was...

Islam and Muslims in the southern territories of the Philippine Islands during the American colonial period (1898 to 1946).
September 1, 1998... The United States gained authority over the Philippine Islands as a result of the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Treaty of Paris (1899), which recognized American wartime territorial gains. Prior to that time the Spanish had general...

The changing interpretation of religious freedom in Indonesia.
September 1, 1998... The Preamble to the 1945 Constitution of independent Indonesia contains an ideological tenet called Pancasila.(1) As the name implies - panca (five) and sila (principles or pillars) - it is composed of five principles: Belief in One God,...

"Barbarians" and "younger brothers": the remaking of race in postcolonial Vietnam.
September 1, 1998... In the spring of 1954, Vietnamese revolutionaries launched a decisive assault against French colonial troops in the mountain valley of Dien Bien Phu.(2) The military defeat of France, crystalized in the surrender of French troops in May 1954,...