Silkworm Books / Trasvin Publications LP – förlag

This collection brings together original, small-scale, ethnographic research on minorities, displaced peoples, and communities contesting heritage, livelihood, language, and citizenship in Thailand. The case studies included here look at the rights of communities to manage their own cultural and natural resources across a range of settings including ethnic Khmer communities in the Northeast, migrant groups in metropolitan Bangkok, and hill tribe communities in the North of Thailand.

This volume brings together exciting new research by anthropologists working on mainland Southeast Asia, in honor of anthropologist Charles F. Keyes. It addresses concepts central to Keyes's own work—ethnicity, religion, and modernity—as they can be applied to the countries of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.In addition to three sections covering different aspects of anthropological research, the book also contains a biography of and interview with Keyes and a selected bibliography of his work.

This book contains nine contributions at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and sociocultural politics in mainland Southeast Asia, inspired by the remarkable career of Achan Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, an academic who has worked tirelessly in Thailand and beyond to foster critical social-science scholarship that engages with marginalized communities. The research in this volume is both highly personal and academically rigorous, born out of the authors' experiences studying and working with communities and individuals who are too easily pushed to the margins of mainstream politics and culture, including Khmu migrant laborers, Wa communities in Shan State, meditating Thai hermits, and the fighters and bystanders in the complex violence in southern Thailand, among others. This willingness to support such underprivileged groups through meticulous scholarship is a hallmark of the engaged scholarly activism Achan Chayan has spent a lifetime encouraging.

Who Cares? presents findings on the social protection response to the COVID-19 pandemic in six Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. After a regional overview, country-specific chapters narrate the pandemic's unfolding, public health measures taken to contain it, and economic impacts on different demographics and assesses the effectiveness of social welfare programs. Collectively, the research demonstrates that social protections have been a secondary concern in policy making and resource allocation. Moreover, program details disclose entrenched limitations and biases: privileges for civil servants and formal sector employees; inadequate or nonexistent allowances for the poor, informal and migrant workers, and those outside the labor market; and greater economic vulnerability among women and other marginalized groups.Ultimately, this work highlights the paradox that crises disproportionately affect the most socially deprived, yet they are the ones less socially protected. Tackling this issue demands change at the structural level—change that can only be brought about by acknowledging the socioeconomic and political values that shape societal systems.

Around the globe, an age-old truth persists: "To annihilate my culture and identity, you must first destroy my language and writing." Whether through deliberate political policies or sheer neglect, minority communities teeter on the precipice of losing or have already lost their languages and unique scripts. This silent erosion is often overlooked amid the clamor of more prominent issues. This book stands as a clarion call to rectify this injustice.At its heart lies a translation from an early nineteenth-century manuscript inscribed in the endangered old Shan script—a treasure understood by a few elderly souls in Burma (Myanmar). The author embarked on an odyssey, collaborating with monks and villagers in hamlets and monasteries to unravel the text's meaning.Tai Herbalism offers a window into how the early Burmese addressed afflictions of both mind and body. Within its pages, Shan herbal remedies mingle with chants, spells, and rituals—a glimpse into the Shan magico-religious belief system. The book also unveils the once-thriving ecosystem of nineteenth-century Shan forests, an oasis of biodiversity. A precious medicinal index documents the plants and animal parts harnessed for healing. Since the manuscript's time, these forests have fallen to the march of time, with many species pushed to the brink of extinction. Yet this book stands as a beacon of hope, preserving a record of the past, with a dream that conservationists may someday breathe life back into this lost Eden.

In northern Thailand, Laos, and southern China, marginal fishing communities along the Mekong River and its tributaries are experiencing the adverse effects of changing ecosystems on their fish stocks, local economies, lifestyles, and cultural practices. Transnational mega-projects are causing great environmental degradation and endangering people's livelihoods. While depicting a stark future for less advantaged Mekong communities, this book sees reasons for hope in the communities' capacity to respond to these changes.Using their knowledge and experience to cope with evolving historical realities such as erratic water levels, many local communities have devised conservation measures for fishing. The author advocates bottom-up planning and transnational civil society alliances between local groups and regional and international organizations to bring about more balanced development and sounder natural resource management in the region.Appendixes contain an extensive inventory of fish species, habitat, conservation status, and fishing techniques.

This pioneering dictionary focuses primarily on the dialect of Dai Lue spoken in Sipsong Panna, China, but also notes differences with the Dai Lue dialect in Thailand. Containing more than 13,000 Dai Lue entries, the dictionary provides a phonetic pronunciation guide and complete English definition for each word, as well as the part of speech, classifiers, and spelling variants. Helpful usage examples of the word in context are all accompanied by English translation. An index of English terms keyed to the Dai Lue entries follows the dictionary proper. A bilingual English/Thai introduction to the Dai Lue language is included. Extensive appendixes provide lists of Dai Lue classifiers, pronouns, onomatopoetic words, final particles, geopolitical terms, color terms, and a frequency list of 150 of the most commonly used words.The dictionary is an essential reference for both learners of Dai Lue and for Dai Lue speakers who are interested in their own language or in learning English. It will prove invaluable for Tai scholars as well as linguists interested in Asian languages.

The Family in Flux in Southeast Asia addresses the need to understand new trends affecting basic family structures in the region: decreases in fertility rates, aging populations, rising divorce rates, increases in female-headed households, smaller families, and increasing mobility of migrant workers. Leading scholars from disciplines including history, political science, economics, sociology, literary studies, and anthropology address topics including legal institutionalization, polygamy, national identity, gender roles, migration, and transnational marriage. They present cases of complementary, alternative, or parallel developments form Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. The authors provide a critical look at how notions of the family are negotiated amidst worries over the family's disintegration in the face of globalizing trends and increasing mobility, and how it is affected by increasing flows in the globalizing world.

The lost civilization of Angkor left no written records, leaving only ancient stones can tell the tale. The Story of Angkor exposes the history of this once-mighty Southeast Asian empire through the secrets hidden inside the temples and buildings located around the city of Siem Reap. Written in a concise, accessible style, with photos and maps, The Story of Angkor presents an in-depth analysis of the ancient Angkor civilization that will appeal to both readers and travelers.

Just Enough travels inside the conflict zone of Thailand's southernmost provinces and delves into traditional Malay Muslim culture. Mira Lee Manickam takes us into a small fishing village in troubled Pattani Province and gains privileged access to a side of Malay Muslim society rarely seen by outsiders. This is a personal journey of growth, loss, and friendship that reveals the colors of daily life beneath black and white newspaper headlines.

This book brings together empirically grounded studies of the decentralization of natural resource management in seven South and Southeast Asian countries. It provides a clear explanation of the key concepts and debates in decentralization relevant to the management of forests, fisheries, and water in the region.The editors draw on evidence presented in the book to argue that the politics of decentralization is best understood as the terrain of negotiation and conflict. This approach to politics stands in contrast to the common assumption that democratic management can be manufactured by decentralization programs designed by experts and governments. The diverse cases presented in the book show that decentralization can shift the terrain of struggle in a variety of ways, sometimes in favor of farmers, fishers, water users, and forest users, and sometimes to their disadvantage. Readers of this book will learn to be wary of centralizing forces that use donor-funded decentralization to stave off pressure for genuine democratization, and to identify opportunities to promote institutions that could be open to capture by democratic groups.

This book explores newly emerging communities and the new practices, knowledge, and power relations that can no longer be explained adequately by the conventional conception of community. In the early 1980s, Benedict Anderson coined the term "imagined communities" to examine the creation and global spread of the nation-state as a collective fiction constructed in the homogeneous and empty time of modernity. Set against this conceptual background, the present volume focuses on the processes of "imaging communities" to explore how people imagine and create their own sense of knowledge, power, and identity.The essays in this volume consider the communal relations and properties of newly emerging or transforming communities, associations, and networks: the "imagined family" in shaping the modern Thai nation-state, the Asoke community of a new Buddhist movement, a Karen millenarian Buddhist community on the Thai-Myanmar border, networks of producers and sellers in the Night Bazaar of Chiang Mai, female factory workers in Lamphun, and HIV/AIDS self-help groups of northern Thailand.Taken together, these case studies demonstrate the possibilities of new communities in Thailand and provide a key reference for both students and scholars concerned with a critical approach to sociology, history, development studies, Southeast Asian studies, and anthropology.

Capturing the vanishing memory of ancient rituals, recited texts, and places imbued with echoes of the past, The Enduring SacredLandscape of the Naga recounts the lived texture of human experience in the Mekong River valley. The book reconstructs the history of those areas fused with legends and lore of the tutelary spirits of the region known as the ngu (serpent), ngeuak (salt-water crocodile), and naga (supernatural beings with both snake and human attributes).While naga iconography adorns Buddhist temples throughout Southeast Asia, particularly in Laos and northeastern Thailand,the naga's pervasive presence is slowly fading from collective memory. By recording extant oral traditions and relying on the fourteenth-century palm-leaf chronicle Urangkhathat, whichmany Western scholars have found to be undecipherable, the authors take the reader on a journey of the sacred sites and culture of the region, its reality and nether world, and the flesh, bone, and soul of the naga. Richly illustrated with nearly a hundred photographs, this book will serve as an evocative testament to the unique cultural traditions of the Mekong Basin.

Reading a people's mythology permits a fascinating entry into another culture.To help the reader appreciate the details of the myth, Anthony Walker provides an ethnographic introduction to the Lahu people and their way of life. A social anthropologist, Dr. Walker has spent over thirty years studying Lahu cultural traditions. He lived for four years in a Lahu village in North Thailand and subsequently has made almost annual visits to this and other Lahu villages in Thailand and, since 1990, in China.This is the first time that a major English-language translation of the Lahu myth of creation has been published.

Preeminent Southeast Asian scholar David Wyatt brings together in this volume all his major early articles. Written between 1963 and 1988, they cover Thai history from the early history of Siam, the "family politics" of the Ayudhya and Bangkok periods, the so-called "First Reign," the dramatic reign of King Chulalongkorn, and up to the origins of modern Thailand.

Two years after the 1685 French embassy to Siam led by Chaumont and Choisy, King Louis XIV sent a second embassy to Phra Narai led by the two envoys La Loubère and Céberet, and a third unofficial emissary, Father Tachard, who was working behind the scenes and often against his colleagues. Accompanying them were expeditionary troops to be installed in Bangkok and Mergui once a Franco-Siamese treaty could be negotiated.This volume conveniently presents, in English translation, three important accounts of that second French embassy to Siam in 1687: Tachard's Second Voyage, published in 1689; Céberet's Journal du voyage de Siam, published in 1992; and Tachard's "Relation," an unpublished account of the tempestuous journey back to France.Beginning with a listing of the dramatis personae and a general introduction to set the stage, Michael Smithies introduces each of the three accounts in turn, providing background information about the authors and their times before presenting the relevant sections of their texts. Written from different perspectives, these key documents, taken together, form a fuller picture of the events and issues of this embassy. The volume ends with an appendix on La Loubère, including the text of his many brief references to the embassy in his comprehensive work, The Kingdom of Siam.Michael Smithies, former editor of the Journal of the Siam Society, is the author of numerous books and articles on the French involvement in Siam in the 17th century. He retired from the United Nations in Bangkok in 1992.

On December 8, 1941, less than two hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces began invading Thailand. Despite Thailand's strong national pride, the government had no recourse but to surrender to Japanese demands and allow their troops to occupy the country.The military agreement between Thailand and Japan spontaneously mobilized an underground resistance movement that gained in strength and momentum as the war progressed. Led by Pridi Banomyong, the resistance grew into a mass movement throughout the country, including many prominent figures in the government, the military, and the police. Organized resistance efforts sprang up among Thai students in the U.S. and England as well, training them for guerrilla operations and intelligence missions inside Thailand. The Seri Thai, or Free Thai Movement, became a major political force once the war was over, effectively blocking the attempt by some allied countries to extract concessions and take reprisals against Thailand.

This useful reference presents a wealth of statistics on the ethnography of Vietnam, focusing primarily on the last few decades. It analyzes the ethnic composition of the population, identifying each of the 54 ethnic groups and sub-groups by name, geographical distribution, and linguistic origin. Geographic distribution statistics are provided for each ethnic group, showing the process of migration and redistribution. Other factors covered are population structure, population growth, and the relationship between population and socioeconomic development.The analysis is based on population censuses and annual statistics from both central and local government offices as well as data from the field. The systematic presentation of demographic information in easy-to-read tables, with accompanying explanation and discussion of national population policies, will be invaluable to policy makers, consultants, and researchers requiring detailed and comprehensive information on the multi-ethnic population of Vietnam.

The history of Southeast Asia -- especially mainland Southeast Asia -- has been written as a history of kings and states. The modern states of Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam thread their way back into the past, and the emergence of these states, the importance of their capitals, and the power of their dynasties have been the dominant themes of the history of the region.This collection of essays challenges this perspective. Taken together, they question how powerful the great centers and their rulers really were. The authors shift the focus to smaller settlements and more peripheral communities, looking at the capitals and the central authority from this viewpoint. They react against the modern impulse to look at the commonalities of the region and instead concentrate on the variety. The result is an intimate and unusual view of historical Southeast Asia as a society of cosmopolitan cities, mobile communities, and fluid local politics.Essays consider Pegu, Arakan, Phuket, the Vietnamese port city of Hoi An, the eastern Martaban Bay port cities, and the Orang Laut and the Malay kingdoms of Melaka and Johor.The contributors are Sunait Chutintaranond, Tun Aung Chain, Jacques P. Leider, Dhiravat na Pombejra, Nguyen Chi Thong, and Chuleeporn Virunha.

The essays in this volume form a rich collage of the central Mekong basin spanning nearly 1,400 years of history. Gathered from an international group of scholars, each with a unique approach to the region, this research draws upon materials in more than a dozen languages scattered in archives around the world. Topics include basic structural problems in writing Lao history; political geography from the 600s to 800s; separate discussions of Lao, Vietnamese, and Western sources of early Lao history; the Lao-Tay-son alliance in the late eighteenth century; Lao millenarian movements and French colonial rule; and the geographical history of changing territorial boundaries of modern Laos. This collection breaks new ground, and is certain to stimulate new questions, ideas, and research. It is an invaluable new resource in Lao history.Mayoury Ngaosrivathana is the coauthor of Paths to Conflagration. Kennon Breazeale is projects coordinator, East-West Center, Honolulu.

In this second episode of the Father Ananda mystery series, all is not as it seems when Father Ananda is summoned by the Buddhist authorities in Bangkok to investigate an odd case of suspected suicide in a rural temple. A young nun's gruesome death in a crocodile pit at the temple's Buddhist theme park sets off a chain of events that places Ananda and his novice Jak in grave danger. Determined to expose the secrets hidden in this famous monastic community, Ananda fights powerful vested interests.Nick Wilgus is a writer and editor for the Bangkok Post. In additon to the Father Ananda mysteries, he is the author of Bilal's Bread under the pen name Sulayman X.

This book examines the challenges faced by young Muslim female athletes from Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia in competitive sports. After presenting a socio-historical survey of the Malay world before, during, and after colonization, the author focuses on contemporary social dynamics, including the emergence of Muslim women competing on the international level. Through surveys and interviews conducted at the Twenty-Second South East Asian Games in Hanoi, she captures the athletes' experiences and perspectives as they compete, often under rules that conflict with Islamic practice.

Hui Muslims in China have lived with the Han Chinese for hundreds of years, maintaining their Islamic and cultural identity despite the powerful assimilation mechanisms of Chinese society. Today, however, the urban Hui community is confronted with new pressures. Zhou Chuanbin and Ma Xuefeng examine the traditional social structure and kinship network of urban Hui Muslims that historically allowed them to defend ethnic and religious boundaries. They consider the social transitions and challenges caused by revolution, modernization, urbanization, and globalization that presently threaten the cultural survival of the Hui Muslim community in Beijing.

Polygamy emerged as a political issue in Indonesia following the 1998 reformation that ushered in a period of social change. This period has been characterized by challenges to established institutions and values, particularly from diverse social groups and individuals who have strong views on the practice of polygamy. Various groups emerged in an effort to gain influence within an unstable society, and the issue of polygamy was part of this social foment.Based on research conducted in Yogyakarta, this study identifies and describes the dynamics and causes that have contributed to the increasingly complex debate on polygamy in Indonesia among women's rights activists, state elites, religious leaders, and supporters of shariah. It also elucidates the Indonesian government's views on polygamy, from the New Order through the reform period that followed, and examines how government policies have affected the polygamy debate.

Each year during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Indonesian television stations adopt Muslim themes in virtually all of their programs, ranging from religious teaching to quiz programs to cooking shows to soap operas. The latter are Muslim-themed serials featuring melodramatic stories about upper- and middle-class women with an emphasis on prayer and devoutness.This study investigates how these serials have contributed to constructing images of contemporary Islamic culture and urban Muslim women in Indonesia. Using textual analysis and audience ethnography, the author shows how women and Islam have been "framed" by the media in transitional Indonesia.

Indonesia's Reformasi era ushered in a new atmosphere of political openness under which groups long suppressed have resurfaced, including those that were deemed "extreme left" and "extreme right" by previous regimes. Among the ideas being discussed is the implementation of Islamic law or shariah. Pramono U. Tanthowi begins with the question, "Does Islam tolerate non-Muslim minorities?," considering it from historical, political, and religious perspectives within the Indonesian context. Although the central government has not instituted Islamic law nationally, the local government of Cianjur regency in Sunda (West Java) has implemented certain aspects of Islamic law on its own. Using Cianjur as a case study, Tanthowi surveys the views of non-Muslims on shariah as it has been applied over the last several years.

This much-needed collection of research by international and multidisciplinary experts explores the economic, environmental, and health benefits, as well as harmful consequences, of pesticide use in Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.Population growth, the expansion of world trade, increased demands for quantity and quality of agricultural and other commodities, and the need to control vector-borne diseases over the past sixty years have given rise to a proliferation of synthetic chemical pesticides in both developed and developing nations. Since the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962, the easily perceived immediate benefits of pesticides have been tempered by concerns about their more subtle long-term environmental and health consequences. The use of pesticides is often justified as beneficial in economic terms, but the amounts and allocations of the direct and indirect costs have come into question.The book includes descriptions of pests and the pesticides used to control them. Authors give several perspectives on questions of safety, cost, and benefit for the environment, economy, and public health. Representatives of pesticide and commodity producers argue for the low-risk benefits of pesticides if they are properly used; research scientists present information on health and environmental consequences of the actual patterns of use by farmers; economists present data on costs and their allocation; and development agency representatives describe methods of reducing hazards through farmers' field schools and integrated pest management, and discuss the procedures and problems of international control of pesticides.

Over the last few decades, the Mekong region has been facing complex pressures and challenges in water governance driven by a range of economic integration efforts and relationships motivated by national self-interest. This book, the first in a three-volume series, brings together the work of researchers, scholars, activists, and leaders in the Mekong region to provide a baseline, state-of-knowledge review of the contemporary politics and discourses of water use, sharing, and management, and their implications for local livelihoods.The book critically analyzes contested discourses on such topics as regional hydropower development, floods, and irrigation, along with the broader yet interrelated issues of gender, media, dialogue, and impact assessment. The writers explore the interplay of power relationships between state planners, regional institutions, the private sector, and various water users, in particular, politically marginalized groups including women, urban and rural poor, and ethnic peoples. The diverse array of topics and perspectives provides a sound basis for engaging in policy-related action.Written in straightforward language that elucidates complex issues from hydrological modeling to energy planning and reform, the volume presents the evolving study and knowledge of water governance in the Mekong region.