In The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford UP, 2024), Kevin D. Pham introduces Vietnamese political thought to debates in political theory, showing how Vietnamese thinkers challenge Western conventional wisdom. He traces an intergenerational debate among six influential figures in colonial Vietnam. These figures had competing visions for how the Vietnamese should respond to French colonial domination, what the Vietnamese should do with their traditions given the influx of political and social ideas from the West, and how they should harness feelings of national shame to construct national dignity. Their answers offer surprising lessons for how we in the West can enhance our understanding of decolonization, shame, dignity, and cross-cultural engagement.

Kevin D. Pham is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He explores the history of political thought, particularly how thinkers outside "the West" have conceptualized democracy and anticolonialism, and how they challenge and enhance the field of political theory. He has special interests in Vietnam. His articles have been published in journals such as Theory & Event, Philosophy and Global Affairs, European Journal of Political Theory, The Review of Politics, Polity, New Political Science, The European Legacy, and Montaigne Studies. He is the author of The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford University Press, 2024). He co-hosts a podcast about Vietnamese intellectual history called Nam Phong Dialogues. Kevin can be reached at [email protected]. His website is here: www.kevindoanpham.com.

Camellia (Linh) Pham is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Harvard. Her research explores modern Vietnamese literature, literary translation across French, Vietnamese, English, and Chinese, and the literary history of French Indochina. She can be reached at [email protected].

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Over the two decades since the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, peacebuilding interventions around the globe have increasingly incorporated gender perspectives. These initiatives have used both development programs and gender mainstreaming to advance women's empowerment, with the aim of making peacebuilding more effective as well as building more stable societies and efficient economies. This goal has been manifested in a wide range of programs and projects-or "gender interventions"—including economic empowerment measures, gender quotas, gender-responsive budgeting, and legal reforms. Yet, the results have been uneven, provoking a sizable debate among scholars and practitioners seeking to explain the shortcomings and improve the outcomes.

In Building Peace, Rebuilding Patriarchy: The Failure of Gender Interventions in Timor-Leste (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dr. Melissa Johnston explains why gender interventions often fail to help those who most need them, using the case of Timor-Leste, a country subjected to high levels of peacebuilding and gender interventions between 1999 and 2017. Looking at three types of gender interventions—gender-responsive budgeting, the law against domestic violence, and microfinance initiatives—Dr. Johnston argues that these reforms have produced mixed results because they reinscribe entrenched class and gender hierarchies in their implementation.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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What are the threats to academic freedom in Thailand? Why does the freedom of scholars and students matter for society at large and how are the attacks on Thai academia linked to the larger democracy movement in the region?

Julia Olsson, a doctoral student at the Center for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University, talks to Dr. Karin Zackari, a human rights scholar, about the Thai state’s attacks on academia in the past decade and the surprising parallel rise of dissent at Thai universities.

Dr. Karin Zackari is a researcher at the Department of History and the Center of East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University. Zackari is the PI of the project **Cultivating identities and capitalism: Scandinavians and the Siamese royal elite in-between empires.** Since July 2024 she is involved in the EUVIP: The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe coordination and support action 10107906 (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03).

Episode producer: Tabita Rosendal

Show links:

• New Threats to Academic Freedom In Asia
• The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region (EUVIP)
• The Academic Freedom Index 
• Scholars at Risk Monitoring Project Index 

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners:

• Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia)
• Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland)
• Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania)
• Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden)
• Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland)
• Norwegian Network for Asian Studies

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Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right?

In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion.

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Conventional accounts of the Cold War focus on competition between the United States and Soviet Union as key to shaping world events. In focusing on the agency of Indonesia’s Suharto regime during its first decades, Matthias Fibiger casts new light on how the Cold War was experienced elsewhere. Based on extensive analysis of state archival records, Fibiger shows how Suharto navigated risks as he took power, constructed a counterrevolutionary New Order regime with foreign aid and investment, and projected its ideologies in other countries of Southeast Asia. By situating views from Jakarta in the broader context of international relations between superpowers and the non-aligned movement, Suharto’s Cold War: Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the World (Oxford University Press, 2023) deepens understanding of political and diplomatic history in Southeast Asia and the World.

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Southeast Asia is of vital importance to Australia. As a nation, Australia’s prosperity, security and economic future are intimately connected to the region. According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, Southeast Asia is expected to be the fourth largest economy in the world by 2040, with its middle class already numbering close to 200 million people. Recognising the crucial significance of Southeast Asia to Australia, the Federal Government released Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040 in September 2023, which provides a roadmap to deepening our economic engagement and increasing two-way trade and investment with the region. Natali’s guest on SSEAC Stories is Nicholas Moore who Lead the development of this national strategy, and who was appointed as Australia’s Special Envoy for Southeast Asia in November 2022.

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Majapahit was Indonesia, and Southeast Asia’s, largest empire. Centered on the island of Java, Majapahit commanded loyalty from vassals across the archipelago: on Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and even the Malay Peninsula, including a tiny village called Tumasik–known today as Singapore. The empire lasted for around 230 years, from its founding in 1292 to its fall to the Sultanate of Demak in 1527.

Today, the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Majapahit is an important source of national pride in today’s Muslim-majority Indonesia: Even the Indonesian coat of arms, with its garuda and the motto “Unity in Diversity”, is rooted in the Majapahit era.

But the tale of Majapahit–as told in Herald van der Linde’s book, Majapahit: Intrigue, Betrayal and War in Indonesia’s Greatest Empire (Monsoon Books: 2024)–is a story of mythical kings, conquest, betrayal, and intrigue, as Indonesian royals jostled for position…and at times fought off external enemies like the Mongols.

Herald van der Linde has travelled, lived and worked in Indonesia and Hong Kong since the 90s. He is also the author of Jakarta: History of a Misunderstood City (Marshall Cavendish International: 2022)

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Majapahit. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.

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Visual Anthropology of Indian Films: Religious Communities and Cultural Traditions in Bollywood and Beyond (Routledge, 2024) provides a unique insider’s look at the world’s largest film industry, now globally known as ‘Bollywood’ and challenges existing notions about Indian films.

Indian films have been a worldwide phenomenon for decades. Chapters in this edited volume take a fresh view of various hidden gems by maestros such as Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, V. Shantaram, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Shakti Samant, Rishikesh Mukherjee, and others. Other chapters provide a pioneering review and analysis of the portrayal of Indian religious communities such as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Parsis. The themes covered include unique Indian feminism and male chauvinism, environment and climate issues, international locations and diaspora tourism, religious harmony and conflict, the India-Pakistan relationship, asceticism, and renunciation in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Unlike many recent studies of Indian films, these chapters do not distinguish between popular and serious cinema. Many chapters focus on Hindi films, but others bring insights from films made in other parts of India and its neighbouring countries.

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How exactly were Thailand’s new slate of 200 Senators selected? What is it like to be an independent member of the Senate, when the chamber is now dominated by members closely associated with one of the government parties? Now that the Thai senate plays no role in selecting the prime minister, is it anything more than a talking-shop? What is the atmosphere like inside Thailand’s contentious upper house?

In this episode, senator Pornchai Witayalerdpan discusses the extraordinary process by which he and the 199 other new senators were selected in July 2024. He also explains how a small group of independent-minded senators are trying to promote democratic agendas, despite being consistently outvoted by the conservative majority.

Here is a link to the BBC Thai article mentioned by Pornchai in the interview, which provides some critical analysis on how the majority ‘blue group’ of senators dominated key votes in their first parliamentary session: https://www.bbc.com/thai/articles/cy4nkvx99kro

Independent Thai senator Pornchai Wiyayalerdpan is a former simultaneous interpreter, who did graduate work in international relations and political science at Waseda University in Japan.

Duncan McCargo is President’s Chair in Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University.

Talking Thai Politics brings crafted conversations about the politics of Thailand to a global audience. Created by the Generation Thailand project at Nanyang Technological University, the podcast is co-hosted by Duncan McCargo and Chayata Sripanich. Our production assistant is Li Xinruo.

Website: https://thaipolitics.leeds.ac.uk/podcasts/

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In Cambodian history most people have heard of the great Khmer empire of Angkor, and the radical communist regime of the Khmer Rouge. But who has heard of the famous story of the sweet cucumber farmer who became king of Cambodia in the fourteenth century? 

In this original book, Epistemology of the Past: Texts, History, and Intellectuals of Cambodia, 1855–1970 (U Hawaii Press, 2024), Theara Thun traces the development of Cambodian historiography, from the royal chronicle tradition of premodern times to modern histories based on Western historical methods introduced by French colonial scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Theara discusses the intellectuals – Khmer, French, and maybe surprisingly even Thai - who helped shaped modern Cambodian history writing. He shows that indigenous Cambodian historiographical traditions survive in the present in surprising forms. This is an important contribution to an emerging scholarship on Southeast Asian intellectual history.

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Why are dubious power-sharing deals on the rise across Southeast Asia? What effects do they have on the region’s prospects for democracy? And are they going to be tolerated? Join Petra Alderman as she talks to Duncan McCargo and Rendy Pahrun Wadipalapa about their recent Journal of Democracy article ‘Southeast Asia’s Toxic Alliances.’ They discuss the factors that underpin the rise of these toxic alliances among Southeast Asian elites, their characteristics, and their effects on democracy by focusing on three countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Duncan McCargo is President's Chair in Global Affairs at the Nanyang Technological University. He works mainly on the comparative politics of Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, on which he has published widely. His dozen books include the best-selling The Thaksinization of Thailand (co-authored, NIAS Press 2005), and the award-winning Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell 2008); and more recently Fighting for Virtue: Politics and Justice in Thailand (Cornell 2019) and Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party (co-authored, NIAS Press 2020).

Rendy Pahrun Wadipalapa is a researcher at National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) in Jakarta, Indonesia. He earned his PhD from the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, UK (2022). His research focuses on Southeast Asian and Indonesian politics.

Petra Alderman is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Leadership for Inclusive and Democratic Politics at the University of Birmingham and Research Fellow at CEDAR.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on X (Twitter) at @CEDAR_Bham

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