Mangkunagara I (1726-95) was one of the most flamboyant figures of 18th-century Java. A charismatic rebel from 1740 to 1757 and one of the foremost military commanders of his age, he won the loyalty of many followers. He was also a devout Muslim of the Mystic Synthesis style, a devotee of Javanese culture and a lover of beautiful women and Dutch ......
What is the modern in Southeast Asia's architecture and how do we approach its study critically? This pathbreaking multidisciplinary volume is the first critical survey of Southeast Asia's modern architecture. It looks at the challenges of studying this complex history through the conceptual frameworks of translation, epistemology, and power. ......
Ethnography of Statelessness Written by a Stateless Academic
"In the springtime of the year that I was twenty-one, I found myself stuck at the border between two familiar countries, unable to enter either. I had never felt my statelessness so keenly." Japan's 1972 termination of diplomatic ties with the Republic of China left 9,200 Chinese residents stateless. Tienshi "Lara" Chen was one of them, born to ......
A new analytical perspective on stones and stone masters across Southeast Asia that extends and deepens the recent literature on animism. Stones and stone masters are an important focus of animist religious practice in Southeast Asia. Recent studies on animism see animist rituals not as a mere metaphor for community or shared values, but as a ......
Historians rely on Singapore's strategic position to explain its great success as a royal trading port in the 14th century, and as a British colony after 1819. What, then, accounts for the many centuries when it seemed not to thrive, and was seen in the words of John Crawfurd as "only the occasional resort of pirates"? This seeming paradox sits ......
Neighbourhood, State and Economy in Indonesia's City of Struggle
Surabaya, 1945-2010 presents the recent history of one of Indonesia's great port cities as viewed from a crowded low-income neighbourhood (kampung) called Dinoyo. By following the lives of Dinoyo residents over three generations, it provides a new perspective on landmark moments in the country's modern history, including the war for independence, ......
Studies of the Tai world often treat 'state' and 'community' as polar opposites: the state produces administrative uniformity and commercialisation, while community sustains tradition, local knowledge and subsistence economy. This assumption leads to the conclusion that the traditional community is undermined by the modern forces of state ......
The extended metropolitan regions of Southeast Asia are the dynamic cores of their national economies and societies and the frontiers of accelerating globalization. ""The City in Southeast Asia"" explores ways of moving beyond outmoded paradigms of the Third World City or a Southeast Asian city 'type'. It begins by contrasting the acknowledged ......
Singapore's transformation from a trading port to a global city offers a compelling case study in long-term economic change. The Economic History of Singapore presents a detailed account of the city-state's evolving economic roles, from regional entrepot in the fourteenth century, to colonial port city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ......
