In past and present Vietnam, the dialectic of precarity and resilience shapes the everyday lives of mobile labourers. Vietnamese labour mobility is characterised by an interplay between precariousness ‘at home’ and the uncertainties of migration. The paper aims to highlight continuities and contingencies in the longue durée of Vietnamese work migration through a historical contextualisation of precarious labour relations. Both colonial ‘coolie’ workers and present-day labour migrants share similar experiences, for example socioeconomic marginalisation in the regions of origin, opportunity and risk, and emerging translocal identities.

Employment relations systems generally fail to enforce all legal rights of migrant workers. This article illustrates a broader approach to the way labour migration is regulated in practice, using the example of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. Political economists have shown that the reality of low-wage migration is either ‘more rights, less access’ or ‘fewer rights, greater access’ in terms of rights enforcement systems. Attention to the effectiveness of such mechanisms and processes reveals another feature of regulation: the divergence of theory from practice. Much scholarly attention has been paid to rights, and this analysis, in which enforcement of those rights is sought, contributes to the literature with a frequently-occurring example of how such regulatory practices effectively restrict migrant rights. The article concludes by arguing that regulation uses employers as a further ‘mechanism of control’ to determine the actual quantity and quality of migrant workers’ employment rights regardless of what is stipulated in the law.

Malaysian politics has been turbulent over the past two decades, as seen in the damaged tradition of leadership transition, non-violent revolts against successive regimes, and unstable realignments of opposing forces. Two startling symptoms point to disorder. One is the heavy electoral losses and loss of legitimacy suffered by the post-Mahathir regimes. The other is the political re-entry of Anwar Ibrahim and Mahathir Mohamad. The persisting turbulence raises certain questions. Why has the ruling party, the United Malays National Organization, been susceptible to internal fighting, being at once a source of hegemonic stability and systemic instability? Why has the apex of the United Malays National Organization repeatedly jeopardised its traditions of leadership succession? Why has one leader, Mahathir Mohamad, been involved in all the disputes? How did the crisis of the party, not just the regime, become intimately tied to economic crisis? Conventional paradigmatic explanations of Malaysian politics – inter-ethnic rivalry in a plural society, elite solidarity, and regime type (semi-democratic, hybrid, or competitive authoritarian) – are of little help even if ethnicity, elite conduct, and authoritarian rule are relevant. Instead, this essay suggests that the turbulence is part of a long trajectory of oligarchic reconstitution bound to a peculiar nexus of state, ethnicity, and class. The paper does not construct a theory of Malaysian politics. It offers a historically informed exploration of a leitmotif of an unfinished project that runs through much of the past 20 years of political conflict and struggle.

This paper considers Hmong messianism in Asia and beyond from a historical perspective, arguing that its thematic repetition of themes and ideas requires a new understanding of subjectivity at the intersections of the psychological with the social and political. Hmong messianic movements have adopted a variety of forms ranging from the more indigenous to the more explicitly Christian. While the attempt is not to seek a particularist ‘ethnographic-historical’ understanding of these recurrent movements, nevertheless the contexts of colonialisation, mass migration and marginal social status are suggested as providing the essential background for such an understanding. Several different theoretical approaches to understanding such movements are considered, with some attention to major theorists of structure and agency. It is argued that ultimately messianic movements can be appreciated in terms of a kind of ‘anticipatory consciousness’, and are enabled to challenge current social orders because they are motivated by a particular notion of time, which combines a medieval and revolutionary notion of simultaneity with one of historical progression which is, however, not gradualist. A ‘central irreducible core’ of ritual beliefs and actions among the Hmong emerges from this consideration of historical movements, which may demand a reconsideration of older and largely abandoned notions of cultural structure.

This paper explains the post-Cold War surge of nationalism in Southeast Asia and discusses its significance for regional peace and cooperation. As argued, the growth of nationalism as a form of mass politics has different causes in each Southeast Asian context where it occurs, but at the regional level the phenomenon can be explained by three factors: the failure of earlier nationalist movements to fully deliver their promises; a shift in the international and regional order (the end of the Cold War and the rise of China); and a change in domestic order (political liberalisation and democratisation) that was also occurring across many countries in the region. While the main mission of the new nationalism is the defence of national territory, the movements have the unintended impact of bringing together national communities once divided by Cold War ideologies. The phenomenon also poses some serious risks to regional peace and cooperation.

This article addresses the question, is there such an entity as a separate field of the anthropology of Southeast Asia? Has the crisis in anthropology in the 1970s and ‘the literary turn’ of the 1980s led to a renewed interest in area studies? A number of topics that originally belonged to the field of anthropology will be discussed: religion, the culture of social class and strategic groups, family and gender relations, developments in tourism, leisure and consumption, material culture, media and performance, and the growing importance of the rapid urbanization in Southeast Asia and its relationship with globalization and localization.

This article examines the meaning of Vietnam's removal of the Khmer Rouge in January 1979—an event that recently became a point of contention between the Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Sen and Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong. Since 1980, Vietnam's removal of the Khmer Rouge has been adopted as Liberation Day by the Cambodian ruling political party. The article discusses three topics: (1) the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia during the 1980s and the resulting civil war, (2) three major changes in the Liberation Day narratives, and (3) reflections on Hun Sen and Lee's recent debate. It demonstrates that Hun Sen and Lee's contention reflects on how the legacy of Vietnam's removal of the Khmer Rouge has continued to be very important and sensitive in Cambodia and within the ASEAN Community today. It also examines China's successful approach to strengthening its relationship with Cambodia after more than a decade of the political confrontation and hatred during the 1980s.

Conventionally perceived as a geographical and civilisational periphery of the Muslim world, Indonesia has recently pursued an Islam-based diplomatic narrative that aims to promote itself as a model democratic Muslim-majority country, upholding religious pluralism and tolerance. This paper analyses the educational dimension of this Islamic soft power policy, which has been overlooked by the academic literature. It argues that the extroversion of Indonesian Islamic education—defined as the switch from an inward-looking perspective to a strategy of exporting this sector beyond Indonesia's borders, while upholding the narrative of its national distinctiveness—aims at fostering the authoritativeness of Indonesian Islam, enhancing the nation's standing within the Muslim world and, more broadly, bolstering the image of Indonesian Islam as inherently moderate and pluralist, which serves both domestic and foreign policy purposes. At the same time, extroversion seeks to legitimise local Islamic practices that have become increasingly challenged by external and, in particular, Wahhabi influences. By mapping out historical trajectories and current developments of the Indonesian Islamic educational sphere, we argue that future research on Indonesia's position within and relationship to the Muslim world—and particularly the country's Islamic soft power strategy—must consider Islamic educational institutes and their intellectual milieux as distinct actors in global religious and political competition.

Using the notion of an emerging development problematique in Southeast Asia, this paper uses Thailand to argue that the development challenge is not being solved by economic growth, but reworked. Furthermore, while the policy aims of the early development era could be quite easily identified, measured and addressed, those that have emerged since the Millennium have proved to be more difficult to specify and less amenable to resolution. Drawing on village studies in northeast Thailand, this paper argues that the social adjustments and perturbations engendered by development have created second-order, often more intractable problems and challenges. In this way, the development traction of the early development decades has frequently turned into friction, with the state and its planning and development agencies increasingly struggling to meet both their own objectives and the aspirations of those for whom development was intended. It is also argued that Thailand's problematique is reflected in three emerging gaps: a development gap between what the Thai government is attempting to achieve and the willingness of the Thai population to join in that journey; a political gap reflected in Thailand's Red Shirt/Yellow Shirt conflict; and an aspirational gap between what has been achieved and what is aspired to.

This paper attempts an explanation for the persistence of Khmer cultural identifications on the Ca Mau Peninsula of Vietnam. This low-lying peninsula is a unique human environment, where Khmer villages, Buddhist temple festivals and livelihood activities are centred on a network of saline-infested rivers. The presence of Khmer communities along these waterways is noteworthy, for much scholarship suggests that the waterways of the multi-ethnic lower Mekong region tend to be dominated by non-Khmer ethnic groups. The vigorous Khmer presence on the peninsula is even more intriguing given that the peninsula is a migratory and trade oriented region, long under Vietnamese administration and subject to military and environmental upheavals that have challenged Khmer tenure.

The paper suggests that mastery of communal water harvesting allowed Khmers to survive the long saline water season and gave them a secure foothold in this region. Additionally, their collaborative water harvesting practices contributed to cohesion and a common identity among Khmers and helped strengthen the Theravada Buddhist wat as one of the key cultural institutions on the peninsula. However, the development of an extensive irrigation network by the Vietnamese state in the last thirty years has had the opposite effect. Canal developments facilitated intensive agriculture, immigration and the introduction of new cultural models into the peninsula, while creating economic and environmental insecurity for Khmers and undercutting the traditional grounds for collaboration. Such changes cast light on the links between ethnic identifications and the system of fresh water provision in the lower Mekong region.

This contribution is about a female transnational student from Turkey, Hafize, studying for four years at an Islamic Malaysian university. She was interviewed during the research project “Transnational Student Mobility in Higher Education in Asia”, a multi-sited ethnographic project containing six sub-studies aiming to illuminate student voices and the impact of cultural processes on student-inhabited transnational spaces, identity negotiations, and networks. Through a bottom-up perspective, and with life story as the principal method, the project illustrates processes of social change and relations between the individual and society. Questions are posed about, inter alia, the motivations and reasons that may be identified in the educational stories. Hafize's narrative is discussed as a relational and contextual story, in which family relations and the significance of education, gender, ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic and political situations intersect. Education is given different meanings: instrumental and reflexive as well as emotional aspects. Turning points and the concept of capital, especially social and emotional capital, are addressed. Hafize's family of eight siblings is deeply involved in serial reciprocity, a tightly bonded network supporting all the children in their efforts to study. Hafize's story is substantially gendered and ‘ethnified’ – a reflexive emotional identity project, in which education and religion are given high priority. In Turkey secularist legislation was an obstacle. The studies abroad provided possibilities for self-development but tempered with some limitations.

The concept of al-wala’ wa-l-bara’ (loyalty and disavowal) has become the ideology of modern Salafism; it is used to justify unfriendly relationships with non-Muslims. This concept is usually implemented by reserving love only for fellow Muslims and showing insularity towards non-Muslims. What is the ideological concept that guides some Muslims in their relationship with groups that are considered heretics? This article intends to scrutinize the theological matrix used by vigilante groups in their anti-heresy campaign or attacks on the Ahmadiyya. It also aims to determine why some people believe that persecuting the Ahmadiyya is a theologically justifiable idea. What theological and ideological reasons can be used to justify attacks against the Ahmadiyya community? How do they cope with the conflict between divine law and human/state law? This article argues that instead of feeling guilty, the perpetrators of faith-based violence often feel they have just fulfilled a good religious duty. Committing violence against religious groups deemed heretics is believed to be more than al-amr bi al-màrūf wa al-nahy `an al-munkar (“commanding right and forbidding wrong”)—it is a jihad. Violence is seen not as an illegal act, but as a “virtue” or an effort to save them from the punishment of God in Hell. In justifying the breaching of state law, the idea of a hierarchy in the law is constructed, i.e. state/human law is hierarchically lower than divine law, so attacking the Ahmadiyya is seen as a transgression of human law for the sake of upholding the divine view.

Most scholars think that the generic name ‘Golden Land’ (Sanskrit, Suvarṇabhūmi; Pali, Suvaṇṇabhūmi) was first used by Indian traders as a vague designation for an extensive region beyond the subcontinent, presumably in Southeast Asia. Some Pali sources specifically link Suvaṇṇabhūmi with the introduction of Buddhism to the region. The locus classicus is the Sri Lankan Mahāvaṃsa chronicle (fifth century AD) which states that two monks, Soṇa and Uttara, were sent there for missionary activities in the time of King Asoka (third century BC). However, no Southeast Asian textual or epigraphic sources refer to this legend or to the Pali term Suvaṇṇabhūmi before the second millennium AD. Conversely, one may ask, what hard archaeological evidence is there for the advent of Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia? This article re-examines the appropriation of the name Suvaṇṇabhūmi in Thailand and Burma for political and nationalist purposes and deconstructs the connotation of the term and what it has meant to whom, where, and when. It also carefully confronts the Buddhist literary evidence and earliest epigraphic and archaeological data, distinguishing material discoveries from legendary accounts, with special reference to the ancient Mon countries of Rāmaññadesa (lower Burma) and Dvāravatī (central Thailand).

The mosque connotes a place of prostration towards Allah. As a sacred space, mosque designs use great detail to respect specific ceremonial functions and some requirements outlined in the Quran, but accommodate diverse styles and construction materials that several traditional and cultural factors determine. As early as the seventh century, as Islam spread across the Mediterranean, North Africa, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, the mosque remained a quintessential Islamic building for local Muslim communities. Consequently, mosque architecture presents diverse styles and forms. It does not follow a normative design form besides having an essential hall to accommodate the congregation and visibly indicating the qibla. This paper explores mosque architecture designs in Brunei Darussalam to analyse expressions of cultural identity and constructions of a collective identity. Since the 1950s, mosque architecture in Brunei has distinguished itself by amalgamating designs that culturally significant historical exchanges within and beyond the Malay world dictated. The paper argues that specific governmental, social, cultural and economic contexts necessarily inform the built environment and, particularly, that of religious architecture, resulting in the development of autochthon styles.

Previous decades' celebrations of the triumph of democracy were frequently based on mainstream analyses that displayed two major theoretical problems. First, conceptualisations of democracy based on ‘minimal pre-conditions’ commonly conflated the formal establishment of democratic structures with the far more complex and historically challenging creation of substantive democracy. Second, a deductive and generally ahistorical model asserting fixed stages of ‘democratic transition’ diverted attention from deeper and more substantive examination of struggles for power among social forces within specific historical contexts. By adhering to minimalist conceptions of democracy and simplistic models of democratic change, mainstream analysts quite often chose to overlook many underlying limitations and shortcomings of the democratic structures they were so keen to celebrate. Given more recent concerns over ‘authoritarian undertow’, those with the normative goal of deepening democracy must begin by deepening scholarly conceptualisations of the complex nature of democratic change. This analysis urges attention to the ‘source’ and ‘purpose’ of democracy. What were the goals of those who established democratic structures, and to what extent did these goals correspond to the ideals of democracy? In many cases throughout the world, ‘democracy’ has been used as a convenient and very effective means for both cloaking and legitimising a broad set of political, social, and economic inequalities. The need for deeper analysis is highlighted through attention to the historical character of democratic structures in the Philippines and Thailand, with particular attention to the sources and purposes of ‘democracy’ amid on-going struggles for power among social forces. In both countries, albeit coming forth from very different historical circumstances, democratic structures have been continually undermined by those with little commitment to the democratic ideal: oligarchic dominance in the Philippines, and military/bureaucratic/monarchic dominance in Thailand. Each country possesses its own set of challenges and opportunities for genuine democratic change, as those who seek to undermine elite hegemony and promote popular accountability operate in very different socio-economic and institutional contexts. Efforts to promote substantive democracy in each setting, therefore, must begin with careful historical analysis of the particular challenges that need to be addressed.

Growing rapidly before the early 2000s, literature on provincial Thai politics has dwindled in recent years. This article makes a small attempt to redress this trend by highlighting one distinctive yet understudied emerging electoral dynamics in provincial Thailand. Specifically, drawing mainly on Thai-language primary sources, this paper shows that in the majority of Thailand's provinces, the Provincial Administrative Organisation, an electoral institution that has received an unprecedented amount of state funding in the post-1997 age of decentralisation, has enabled influential political families to retain and even increase their power. As political and economic power has been decentralised from Bangkok, it has ironically been centralised in the hands of a limited number of oligarchic provincial elites. This phenomenon is not an historical aberration; rather, it should be viewed as one manifestation or product of Thailand's enduring patrimonial culture, in which public officeholders’ positions are regarded as an extension of their personal or familial property. I conclude by discussing the Thai case theoretically and comparatively.

The year 2019 marked the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. Making use of published and unpublished Chinese, Vietnamese, and English sources, this article traces the tensions between official and popular memories of the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 in China and Vietnam, respectively. We argue that these tensions existed because the development of the official Chinese and Vietnamese memories of the war largely mirrored each other. Between 1991 and roughly 2006, when bilateral relations between the countries improved, both Beijing and Hanoi claimed victory for their side while simultaneously downplaying the bloodshed, tragedy, and loss experienced during the war. However, they have reacted to the rise of popular memories since the early 2000s in very different ways. While Beijing walks a thin line between accommodating appeals for greater recognition of the sacrifices made by ordinary soldiers without provoking social discontent with the political system, Hanoi has been more successful in mobilising Vietnamese popular memory of the war to strike a measured nationalistic response to China. How China and Vietnam remember and downplay the Sino-Vietnamese War points to the bigger picture of the sensitivity of bilateral relations to historical memory in Asia. In particular, historical memory shapes how a country perceives external threats and opportunities, while historical memory is created, suppressed, and re-created as international relations evolve.

This article explores recent waves of Chinese mobility demonstrated by new Chinese emigrants working for private Chinese companies conducting transnational business in Thailand in general and Chiang Mai Province in particular. We use two case studies of international education centres and real estate for senior care businesses in Chiang Mai to discuss the flexibility of Chinese capitalism and argue that deploying intrapreneurs and cultivating entrepreneurial value for employees, professionals and co-partners in pursuit of transnational business are some of the more flexible strategies that China's private companies have employed in response to their new business lines and emerging market demand from both China and other parts of the globe. However, while the Chinese and Thai states have played an important role in facilitating and regulating business conducted in Thailand, transnational business is in an early stage, as demonstrated by the two case studies explored, and may not always proceed as expected.