{"title":"Power and ritual in the city: Mourning and political juncture at Bangkok's Sanam Luang","authors":"Trude Renwick, Bronwyn Isaacs","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000681","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that ritual remains a potent instrument for the generation of national identity and citizenship in Southeast Asia. We focus our analysis on the ritualisation of public space in Bangkok, Thailand, under the military-led government of General Prayut Chan-o-cha. The authors provide an ethnographic analysis of Sanam Luang, arguing that between 2016 and 2017 funeral rites held in this public space would reanimate it as a catalyst of national unification. As in other cases of ritual in public space, however, the intensified securitisation and control over national mourning for King Bhumibol by the military government, gave way to a range of reactions, including increased protests and criticism of the ruling government and Thailand's lesé-majesté laws by a predominantly youth-led movement in 2020.","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"71 21","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139440675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Eunuchs in Burmese history: An overview","authors":"Katherine A. Bowie","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000735","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000735","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the fact that Burmese courts had sizeable harems and that eunuchs are typically associated with harems, little attention has been paid to the presence of eunuchs in Burmese courts. This essay provides an overview of the existing English-language literature on eunuchs in Burmese courts, focusing on the three Burmese courts for which mention of eunuchs has survived in the historical record, namely the court at Pegu of the Taungoo dynasty (1486–1599), the court of Mrauk U of the Arakan kingdom (1429–1785), and the so-called ‘Court of Ava’ of the Konbaung dynasty (1765–1885). Noting the descriptions of eunuchs as Muslim, the essay considers the evidence regarding their numbers, their functions, and their possible origins.","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"7 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139441364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hanging for murder in late colonial Burma","authors":"Ian Brown","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000693","url":null,"abstract":"The first decades of the twentieth century saw a marked rise in the number of recorded murders in British-ruled Burma. The sentence for murder prescribed by the Indian Penal Code—in force in Burma as a province of British India—was death or transportation for life. However, while Burma's murder count was rising sharply, the number of executions taking place in the province's jails remained broadly stable, with perhaps a tendency to fall, and indeed it fell decisively at the end of the 1930s. By that point, a high standard of evidence was being increasingly demanded for conviction for murder and increasingly the death penalty was being imposed only when murder had clearly been premeditated. In other words, in the administration of justice in murder cases, the rule of law had been markedly tightened. The focus in the article will be on the local pressures, on the practices and perspectives of Burma's colonial administration and of the Burmese themselves that led in time to a decisive fall in the number of convicted murderers who were hanged for their crime.","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"17 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139441545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spectres of a dictatorship: Law's limit concepts in Lino Brocka's Orapronobis","authors":"J. D. Bagulaya","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000759","url":null,"abstract":"This article reads Filipino director Lino Brocka's film Orapronobis (1989) as a commentary on the 1987 Philippine Constitution, a post-dictatorship document which the director helped draft as a member of the Philippine Constitutional Commission. Using a ‘law and film’ approach, the article argues that the film visualises law's limit concepts such as the state of exception, hostis generis humani, and constituent power. The film depicts the failure of words to control the political world that results in a dystopian constitutional order where human rights monsters and revolutionaries contend. Through an exploration of law's limit concepts, Brocka's Orapronobis represents the limits of Philippine constitutionalism.","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"55 42","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139442172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"SEA volume 54 issue 3 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000644","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136160571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial Foreword","authors":"Maitrii Aung-Thwin","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000620","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136160806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"SEA volume 54 issue 3 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000632","url":null,"abstract":"An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dr Edwin S.C. Lee (1939–2023)","authors":"Ernest C.T. Chew","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000656","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136160789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The origins of scientific Buddhism in nineteenth-century Thai intellectual thought","authors":"Davisakd Puaksom","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000607","url":null,"abstract":"This essay proposes a revisionist interpretation of the debates between Buddhists and Protestants in nineteenth-century Siam. It argues that the Buddhist–Protestant debates were different in nature from the earlier Buddhist–Catholic clashes, which were interwoven with colonial ambitions and occasionally erupted in acts of persecution against the Catholics. The debates among Protestant missionaries and the Siamese royalist elite, monks and lay literati comprised an intellectual exchange mediated by the printing press. Centred around the encapsulation and bifurcation of religiosity and modernity, the debates helped the literati readjust their epistemological position during Siam's early modern era, creating a discursive space for the emergence of a form of scientific Buddhism. The latter affirms that Buddhism not only accords with aspects of modern science but was precocious in its understanding of features such as the analysis of mental states prior to modern scientific methods. The ‘scientificity’ of Buddhism as articulated by Siamese literati had long-lasting effects on Thai intellectual life well into the twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"120 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134957883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Retrofitting the Mekong: Community-based environmental responses to Chinese transnational infrastructure in a Thai border town","authors":"Panitda Saiyarod","doi":"10.1017/s0022463423000619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022463423000619","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, the Mekong River has been a site of ongoing tensions between China-backed infrastructure and communities relying on the mighty Mekong for their lives and livelihoods. In Thailand, tensions have escalated into actions against ecologically damaging hydropower dam development and the blasting of river rapids for Chinese navigation in a Thai border town. This article examines how Chinese transnational infrastructure has been reconfiguring power relationships among actors at multiple scales. Based on my fieldwork, I offer a narrative of the concerted efforts by one small community-based environmental group in northern Thailand, some of whose activism has prodded Chinese planners and project managers into responding to widespread criticism of ecological damage caused by its hydropower and riparian infrastructure and ignoring the needs of downstream local communities. The interactions between Chinese agencies and local NGOs will be discussed through the concept of a moral ecology of infrastructure, which contributes to transcending infrastructure and the environment, enabling a broadened understanding of human and nonhuman relations in more recent retrofitting of the dams and waterway projects. I argue that the reconfigured ‘Green’ Belt and Road Initiative is a contingent process in which multiple transnational actors claim decision-making power over the retrofitting and redevelopment of the Mekong's ecological infrastructure.","PeriodicalId":46213,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southeast Asian Studies","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134957996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}