Project MUSE®: Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia.daily12026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 18 (2003) through current issueLatest Articles: Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast AsiaTWOProject MUSE®Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia1793-28580217-9520Latest articles in Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Rural Heritage, Museum Development and the Commodification of Folk Life in Vietnam
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978651
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During a day trip to the UNESCO World Heritage site Hoi An in November 2019, I was taken by some friends from Hanoi to a mangrove area just a few kilometres from the centre of the ancient port town in an area called Bay Mau, noted for its abundance of water coconuts. This natural heritage site had recently become part of the Hoi An tourist itinerary, offering boat journeys along quiet waterways fringed with overhanging water coconut palms. The tour boats were woven circular coracles, found in abundance along the central coast of Vietnam, usually used for fishing. Climbing aboard the coracles, our tour operator, an elderly woman in her seventies, paddled us along the verdant waterways with a flotilla of other
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallRural Heritage, Museum Development and the Commodification of Folk Life in Vietnam2025-12-24text/htmlen-USRural Heritage, Museum Development and the Commodification of Folk Life in Vietnam2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®921642026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Local Impacts of Covid-19 in Cambodia: Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978652
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The purpose of this Special Focus section is to investigate the lasting impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic at the local level in Cambodia. As the pandemic was unfolding, social scientists of Southeast Asia produced a plethora of rapid responses as they sought to engage constructively with policy (Rakhmani and Sciortino 2023; Shin et al. 2022). Now, as the larger threat has receded and restrictions have been lifted, we are left with the task of understanding what the impacts of the pandemic have been—and to draw insights for the region post-pandemic (Shin et al. 2022).Our contribution relates to both the timing and the scale of our inquiry. Most of the current literature on the pandemic is based on data collected
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallLocal Impacts of Covid-19 in Cambodia: Introduction2025-12-24text/htmlen-USLocal Impacts of Covid-19 in Cambodia: Introduction2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®495112026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Local Impacts of Covid-19: How Rural Safety Nets Failed to Save Indebted Construction and Tourism Workers in a Cambodian Lowland Village
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978653
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How did the Covid-19 pandemic affect rural Cambodians in lowland rice-field landscapes? What were the implications of the pandemic for people in rural settings who derive substantial incomes directly or indirectly from tourism? And what broader lessons can be learned from these experiences with regard to the resilience of rural households and the capacity of rural villages to provide a safety net for inhabitants whose livelihoods have become less agricultural and less local in recent decades? We sought answers to these questions in the village of Doun On, barely ten kilometres from the Angkor Wat temple complex and fifteen kilometres from the provincial capital and tourism hub of Siem Reap in northwest
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallLocal Impacts of Covid-19: How Rural Safety Nets Failed to Save Indebted Construction and Tourism Workers in a Cambodian Lowland Village2025-12-24text/htmlen-USLocal Impacts of Covid-19: How Rural Safety Nets Failed to Save Indebted Construction and Tourism Workers in a Cambodian Lowland Village2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®1013572026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24The Local Impacts of Covid-19 on an Indigenous Upland Agricultural Community in Cambodia: The Case of Veal Veng Village
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978654
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In seeking to understand the vulnerabilities and resilience of indigenous communities in relation to pandemics (Ford et al. 2020, pp. 532–33; Garai and Ku 2023; Lugo-Morin 2021), this article investigates the local impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on an indigenous Kuy community in northeast Cambodia. It does so through a mixed methods study of a village called Veal Veng, where an initial survey of the main village in 2023 was followed up with in-depth interviews in 2023 and 2024–25. Although cultural distinctions between Kuy and Khmer identities have become increasingly blurred in recent decades owing to intermarriage, language assimilation and broader processes of social integration, the formal recognition of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallThe Local Impacts of Covid-19 on an Indigenous Upland Agricultural Community in Cambodia: The Case of Veal Veng Village2025-12-24text/htmlen-USThe Local Impacts of Covid-19 on an Indigenous Upland Agricultural Community in Cambodia: The Case of Veal Veng Village2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®796362026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Changing Safety Nets in a Garment Work–Dependent Peri-Urban Setting: The Case of Prey Svay Village, Cambodia, During the Covid-19 Pandemic
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978655
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This article examines the localized impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on livelihoods in the peri-urban village of Prey Svay on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Drawing on in-depth interviews and survey data, it explores how Prey Svay’s residents—primarily garment factory and construction workers—navigated the pandemic’s disruptions. The garment sector, despite expectations of vulnerability, proved relatively resilient, while the construction sector experienced lasting setbacks. These divergent outcomes reveal important insights into rural-to-urban livelihood transitions, the role of informal safety nets, and the gendered dimensions of economic resilience. By situating Prey Svay within broader debates on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallChanging Safety Nets in a Garment Work–Dependent Peri-Urban Setting: The Case of Prey Svay Village, Cambodia, During the Covid-19 Pandemic2025-12-24text/htmlen-USChanging Safety Nets in a Garment Work–Dependent Peri-Urban Setting: The Case of Prey Svay Village, Cambodia, During the Covid-19 Pandemic2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®907002026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24On In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings by James C. Scott (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978656
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In Praise of Floods is the final book of James C. Scott, a distinguished political science professor at Yale University. Published a few years after his retirement, and less than a year after his death on 19 July 2024, it is but one of many important books written by Scott. While aspects of the book harken back to Scott’s previous work, the book’s focus is on river ecosystems, the more-than-human, and how rivers have been thoroughly altered by humans over history, topics not covered in his previous publications.The main geographic area of focus in the book is the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy), one of Burma’s most important large rivers. In Praise of Floods is divided into a short introduction and six substantive chapters
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallOn In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings by James C. Scott (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USOn In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings by James C. Scott (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®501562026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Stalemate: Autonomy and Insurgency on the China-Myanmar Border by Andrew Ong (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978657
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The experience of reading—or re-reading—Andrew Ong’s Stalemate two years after its publication can prove a revelation of sorts. The reader recalls all the past reasons why reading about how the United Wa State Army (UWSA) had entrenched its presence along Myanmar’s peripheries and engaged different external interlocutors was important beyond the research focus. At the same time, paying attention to Ong’s approach to his ethnographic research on the Wa people and their governance practices reveals an empathy—but not necessarily agreement—with the choices and decisions that UWSA leaders made for political and economic survival.Ong describes the Wa leadership’s decision-making for such survival as “relational
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallStalemate: Autonomy and Insurgency on the China-Myanmar Border by Andrew Ong (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USStalemate: Autonomy and Insurgency on the China-Myanmar Border by Andrew Ong (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®78412026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Rights Refused: Grassroots Activism and State Violence in Myanmar by Elliott Prasse-Freeman (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978658
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Rights Refused aims to make sense of political actors in Myanmar who oscillate between absence and presence. It also illuminates the struggles of the populace in refusing the state’s yoke and drawing the state into revealing its repressive intent, while attempting to evade its harsh reprisals. To demonstrate these tactics, the book brings Myanmar’s grassroots activism and experiences of rights-stripped individuals to life, one air-filled cake package at a time.Prasse-Freeman guides the reader through his arguments in three sections. Section I elaborates on the nature of governance of the Myanmar state as blunt biopolitics. Offering a departure from the conventional understanding of the state as an actor that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallRights Refused: Grassroots Activism and State Violence in Myanmar by Elliott Prasse-Freeman (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USRights Refused: Grassroots Activism and State Violence in Myanmar by Elliott Prasse-Freeman (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®69122026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24The Drama of Dictatorship: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines by Joseph Scalice (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978659
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The Drama of Dictatorship weaves together an original account of the events leading to the imposition of dictatorial rule by Ferdinand Marcos Sr. on 23 September 1972 and a scathing critique of the role of the Philippine communist movement in this tragedy. Reworking parts of his dissertation (2017) into a five-part narrative modelled after the drama genre, Scalice offers not only an empirically rich exploration of historical events but also one that is incisive and gripping. The first act, “A Storm on the Horizon”, introduces the leading actors from elite factions, including the dictator Marcos and oppositionist Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., as well as the older Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP, Philippine
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallThe Drama of Dictatorship: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines by Joseph Scalice (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USThe Drama of Dictatorship: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines by Joseph Scalice (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®100422026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Indigenizing the Cold War: The Border Patrol Police and Nation-Building in Thailand by Sinae Hyun (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978660
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How did Thailand’s Border Patrol Police (BPP) evolve until today? To what extent did it build a “human border” in terms of inoculating the hearts and minds of the people (p. 5)? What role has the BPP had in state formation? This well-researched book, based on original fieldwork, addresses these questions. The author is a historian specializing in the Cold War, nationalism and Southeast Asian studies at Sogang University in South Korea. This work derives from her dissertation.The introduction defines the concept of indigenization as adapting global causes to local elites’ interpretations of nation-building (p. 2) and argues that these Cold War postcolonial processes were particularly bloody in Southeast Asia
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallIndigenizing the Cold War: The Border Patrol Police and Nation-Building in Thailand by Sinae Hyun (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USIndigenizing the Cold War: The Border Patrol Police and Nation-Building in Thailand by Sinae Hyun (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®78772026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Chiang Mai Between Empire and Modern Thailand: A City in the Colonial Margins by Taylor M. Easum (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978661
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This book by Taylor M. Easum delves into the history of nineteenth-century Chiang Mai during the height of colonial expansion in Southeast Asia. Easum showcases Chiang Mai as a key kingdom on the “the colonial margins”. He illustrates how Siam treated Chiang Mai as a kind of semi-colonial state while the British took advantage of the city. Even though Chiang Mai was not a main hub like Bangkok was, it was vital for linking the big players in both the political and economic arenas.The book opens by diving into Chiang Mai’s past life as part of the Lanna Kingdom. During the nineteenth century, the British began to push into Lanna to advance their economic interests after colonizing Burma. As a result, Chiang Mai
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallChiang Mai Between Empire and Modern Thailand: A City in the Colonial Margins by Taylor M. Easum (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USChiang Mai Between Empire and Modern Thailand: A City in the Colonial Margins by Taylor M. Easum (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®53482026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Between War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1954–1975 by Van Nguyen-Marshall (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978662
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Van Nguyen-Marshall’s Between War and the State exemplifies the Vietnam-centric turn in recent scholarship by treating the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, commonly referred to as South Vietnam) and its citizenry as a serious subject of inquiry in its own right. Rejecting caricatures of the RVN as a mere lackey of American imperialism and its peoples as passive actors, Nguyen-Marshall reconstructs a vibrant associational landscape in which she highlights a diverse cast of Vietnamese actors who shaped public life alongside, and sometimes in defiance of, the state. They include mutual aid associations, cultural clubs, professional societies, charitable organizations, community development groups, women’s associations
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallBetween War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1954–1975 by Van Nguyen-Marshall (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USBetween War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1954–1975 by Van Nguyen-Marshall (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®75702026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Subjects and Sojourners: A History of Indochinese in France by Charles Keith (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978663
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Charles Keith’s Subjects and Sojourners is an ambitious and meticulously researched intervention into the intertwined histories of Indochina and France during the colonial era. Focusing on the experiences of approximately 200,000 Indochinese who travelled to and sojourned in France between the 1850s and the 1950s, Keith achieves two significant objectives in this work. First, he provides detailed insights into the mechanisms and significance of the circulation of Indochinese colonial subjects between Indochina and France during the colonial period. Second, he persuasively argues that moving beyond the binary of metropole and colony as antitheses offers a more productive framework for understanding the history of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallSubjects and Sojourners: A History of Indochinese in France by Charles Keith (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USSubjects and Sojourners: A History of Indochinese in France by Charles Keith (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®78642026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24Traditional Musical Instruments of Malaysia: Forms, Materials, Function by Patricia Matusky (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978664
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It is rare to find well-researched and comprehensive resources on Malaysian traditional music such as the book under review. Matusky’s earlier co-authored book with Tan Sooi Beng, The Music of Malaysia: The Classical, Folk and Syncretic Traditions (2017), covered some Malaysian traditional music, dividing it into five types: major theatrical forms, major dance forms, percussion ensembles, vocal music, and instrumental music. Matusky’s newest book builds on this earlier publication and is a good reference for anyone interested in Malaysian traditional instruments.In the preface, Matusky mentions that she uses the established Hornbostel-Sachs system of classifying musical instruments (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961; Lee
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/352/image/coversmallTraditional Musical Instruments of Malaysia: Forms, Materials, Function by Patricia Matusky (review)2025-12-24text/htmlen-USTraditional Musical Instruments of Malaysia: Forms, Materials, Function by Patricia Matusky (review)2025-12-242025TWOProject MUSE®101292026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002025-12-24