NUS Press catalog: Jan-June 2024

NUS PRESS NEW BOOKS

Visit nuspress.nus.edu.sg for our full catalogue

Academic Book Prizes

Art Book Accolade, ICAS Book Prize 2023

Artists and the People: Ideologies of Art in Indonesia

Elly Kent

Best Book in the Humanities, International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS)

Book Prize 2023, Finalist

Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, c.1600–c.1906

Heather Sutherland

A.L. Becker Southeast Asian Literature in Translation Prize 2022

A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land: A Novel of Sihanouk’s Cambodia

Suon Sorin, translated by Roger Nelson

Humanities Book Prize, European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) 2022, Finalist

Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, c.1600–c.1906

Heather Sutherland

Social Science Book Prize, EuroSEAS 2022, Finalist

Celluloid Colony: Locating History and Ethnography in Early Dutch Colonial Films of Indonesia

Sandeep Ray

Specialist Publication Accolade, ICAS Book Prize 2021

One or Two Words: Language and Politics in the Toraja Highlands of Indonesia

Aurora Donzelli

Hughes Prize, British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) 2021, Finalist

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819–1942

Timothy P. Barnard

General Book Prizes

Colvin Prize, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) 2023, Winner

Everyday Modernism: Architecture and Society in Singapore

Jiat-Hwee Chang and Justin Zhuang, photographs by Darren Soh

Highly Commended, Arts Writing and Publishing Awards (AWAPAs), Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s (AAANZ)

Artists and the People: Ideologies of Art in Indonesia

Elly Kent

2024 Nancy Staub Award, Union Internationale de la Marionnette (UNIMA) USA, Winner Innovation, Style and Spectacle in Wayang: Purbo Asmoro and the Evolution of an Indonesian Performing Art

Kathryn ‘Kitsie’ Emerson

Best Non-Fiction Title, Singapore Book Awards 2023, Winner

The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory

Kevin Blackburn

Eric C. Thompson

The Story of Southeast Asia

The oldest figurative cave paintings in the world are found on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Hand stencils and animals painted 45,000 years ago attest to a long history of human creativity. The Story of Southeast Asia tells how the peoples of the region have crafted their diverse societies and cultures over thousands of years. Southeast Asia has been a remarkable crossroads of global connections for millennia. Whereas other regions have been defined by centralizing forces, Southeast Asia’s story is one of complex networks of trade, ideas, and social relationships. Southeast Asians have created and remade their cultural values by drawing on influences from around the world.

Marshalling the latest literature from anthropology, archaeology, history and other disciplines, Eric C. Thompson highlights broad themes that cut across history: including the making—and evasion—of states, adoption of diverse religious practices, tolerance and flexibility regarding gender, processes of forging modern identities, struggles over sovereignty, and the making of modern nations in a postcolonial world. This readable, single-volume history reckons with the narrative pull of familiar colonial and national perspectives, but maintains a regional and deep-historical focus. It will be a stimulating read for scholars as well as students and newcomers to Southeast Asian history.

Eric C. Thompson is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore.

“Taking a truly long view extending from prehistory to the present, Thompson provides a comprehensive portrait of this complex and engaging region without flattening its sometimes bewildering cultural variety or its peoples’ capacity for innovation and adaptation.”

– Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University

March 2024

Paperback • S$28 / US$26

ISBN: 978-981-325-234-9

328pp / 229 x 152mm

21 b/w maps, 35 b/w figures

C. Michele Thompson, Kathryn Sweet and Michitake Aso editors

Fighting for Health: Medicine in Cold War Southeast Asia

For far too long, Southeast Asia has been treated as a static backdrop for the exploits and discoveries of Western biomedical doctors. Yet, Southeast Asians have been vital to the significant developments in the prevention and treatment of diseases that have taken place in the region and beyond. Our volume focuses on Southeast Asia during the Cold War because this was a time when many of the institutions and people that have shaped the subsequent responses to outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics first developed. In other words, the Cold War framed many current trends in less than obvious ways. The diversity of approaches to health and medicine in Cold War Southeast Asia also reminds us of the possibilities, and limits, of human intervention in the face of political, social, economic, and microbial realities. More than just a source of emerging infectious diseases, the people and places of Southeast Asia have provided a clinical trial for different health regimes. These insights serve to challenge dominant models of the medical humanities that still ignore much human experience.

C. Michele Thompson is Professor of Southeast Asian History at Southern Connecticut State University. Her research focuses on the history of medicine and the environment of Southeast Asia.

Kathryn Sweet is a social historian of Laos whose research has focused on health, development and cultural issues of the twentieth century.

Michitake Aso is a global environmental historian whose research has focused on Vietnamese and French agriculture, medicine, and health in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

“This is a wide-ranging, compelling, and skillfully edited collection at the cutting edge of new, transnational approaches to health in Southeast Asia. The chapters here show how central health has been to nationbuilding in Southeast Asia – and how crucial Southeast Asia has been to the politics of global health.”

– Sunil Amrith, Yale University

SERIES: THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA (HOMSEA)

February 2024

Paperback • S$38 / US$36

ISBN: 978-981-325-256-1

296pp / 229 x 152mm

4 tables, 12 b/w images, 2 maps

Chua Beng Huat

Public Subsidy, Private Accumulation: The Political Economy of Singapore’s Public Housing

The achievement of Singapore’s national public housing program is impressive by any standard. Within a year of its first election victory in 1959, the People’s Action Party began to deliver on its promises in dramatic fashion. By the 1980s, 85 percent of the population had been rehoused in modern flats, and today, decades later, the provision of public housing shapes Singapore’s environment. The standard accounts of this remarkable transformation leave many questions unanswered, from the historical to urgent matters of current policy: Why, of all the pressing demands of Singapore’s newly enfranchised citizens, was housing such a priority back in the 1960s? How did the provision of social welfare via public housing shape Singapore’s industrialisation and development over the last 50 years? Looking ahead, can the HDB continue to be a source of affordable housing for young families, while long-standing appreciation in flat prices provides for the retirement of their parents? How can this be managed as 99-year leases on flats run down?

This is a culmination of Chua Beng Huat’s study of Singapore’s public housing system, its dynamics, and the ways it functions in Singapore’s politics. Does every great success hold within it the seeds of failure? The book will be of interest to citizens, and scholars of the political economy of Asian development, of social welfare provision, and of Singapore.

Chua Beng Huat is Emeritus Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, National University of Singapore.

“Chua’s erudite book examines the centrality of housing and property wealth in the rise of Singapore, but also the long-run social, economic, and political implications, with the continued viability and legitimacy of the State dependent upon the successes of the housing system.”

– Richard Ronald, University of Amsterdam

March 2024

Paperback • S$32 / US$36

ISBN: 978-981-325-251-6

160 pp / 229 x 152mm

Andrew Hardy and Nguyễ

n Tiến

Đông editors

Discovering Vietnam’s Ancient Capital:

The Archaeology and History of the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long-Hanoi

As Vietnam entered the 21st century it began to prepare for the 1000th anniversary of the founding of its capital Thăng Long, now Hanoi. In the heart of the city, a rescue excavation was launched on land earmarked for the construction of a new National Assembly building. Archaeologists unearthed thirteen centuries of vestiges of the ancient city of Thăng Long, yielding a richer record than anyone had dared to hope for. Construction plans were shelved, excavations widened, and at the city’s millennial celebrations in 2010, UNESCO announced its inscription of the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long on its World Heritage List.

This archaeological discovery has two histories. The first, told here by the archaeologists involved, is the story of the dig, as their trowels brought to light the bricks, tiles, pillars, sculptures and ceramics of countless ancient temples and palaces. The second is the history of the citadel itself, in its early years as an outpost of the Chinese empire, in its heyday as the Forbidden City of Vietnam’s emperors, and in its downgrading and eventual destruction at the hands of the Nguyen dynasty and French colonial rulers. The book presents a historical narrative of the continuous development of a regional political centre on this site. Bringing together history, archaeology and a fascinating interplay of influences from China and Southeast Asia, this is also the story of an Asian capital city coming to understand its history, and deciding how to preserve its archaeological remains.

Andrew Hardy is a historian of Vietnam, with research interests in migration and ethnic relations. He heads the Hanoi centre of the École française d’ExtrêmeOrient (EFEO).

Nguyễn Tiến Đông was an Archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences.

“Even those who are familiar with Hanoi will find this book encaptivating, refreshing, personal, and filled with juicy details.”

– Tana Li, Australian National University

March 2024

Paperback • S$36 / US$32

ISBN: 978-981-325-229-5

356pp / 229 x 152mm

49 b/w images, 21 maps

Michel Picard

Kebalian:

The Dialogic Construction of Balinese Identity

What is it to be Balinese? Over the past hundred years, the Balinese have been challenged by colonial occupation, political turbulence, and tourism. In response, they have taken refuge in what they call their ‘Balinese-ness’ (Kebalian), which they liken to a tree whose roots are their ‘religion’ (agama), the trunk their ‘tradition’ (adat), and the fruits their ‘culture’ (budaya). How did the Balinese come to see their identity in these terms?

To understand how their sense of Balinese-ness came to be, Michel Picard makes a close reading of the dialogues the Balinese have engaged in both among themselves and with outsiders— European orientalists, Dutch colonial administrators, Javanese nationalists, Muslim clerics, Christian missionaries, Hindu gurus, artists and anthropologists, tourists and tourism operators, and, not least, Indonesian government officials, all of whom attempted to impose their visions of Balinese society.

A key through line in the construction of Kebalian is a twofold process of ‘religionization’ and ‘Hinduization’ that began with the incorporation of Bali into the Dutch East Indies and became more urgent with Indonesia’s independence, when the Balinese people had to struggle to have their religion recognized by the state. This resulted in a tension between those Balinese eager to defend their own customary ritual practices and those who aspire to reform them in accordance with what they assume to be Hinduism.

Scholars of religion, cultural change and Southeast Asian area studies will find this book a fascinating and important volume.

Michel Picard is a retired researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a founding member of the Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CNRS-EHESS).

“Anyone interested in the forces that formed Indonesian culture and identity should read it.”

– Adrian Vickers, University of Sydney

SERIES: IRASEC STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARY SOUTHEAST ASIA

March 2024

Paperback • S$42 / US$38

ISBN: 978-981-325-242-4

472pp / 229 x 152mm

3 maps

Stephen A. Murphy

Buddhist Landscapes of the Khorat Plateau: Art and Archaeology of the 7th–11th Centuries

The Khorat Plateau is a landscape of some 155,000 square kilometres of what is now northeast Thailand and central Laos. Despite the rich evidence for the region’s dynamism and development in the metal age, knowledge of subsequent first millennium developments on the Khorat Plateau remains limited. The spread of Buddhism across the region has been overshadowed by the attention given the Dvāravatī culture of the Chao Phraya Basin to its west and the Zhenla and later Angkor civilisations to its south and southeast.

This important new work, built on extensive fieldwork and archaeological surveys, reveals the Khorat Plateau as having a distinctive Buddhist culture, including new forms of art and architecture, and a characteristic aesthetic. Moreover, by combining archaeological and art historical analysis with an historical ecology approach, Murphy traces the outlines of Buddhism’s spread into the region, along its major river systems. He is able to read this history into and against the Khorat landscape, attending to the emergence of monumental architecture such as stūpas and Buddha images carved into the rockfaces of hills and mountainsides, and the importance on the Khorat Plateau of the use of boundary markers, or sīmā. This book provides a new picture of the region in the first and early second millennia, adding to our understanding of the development of Buddhism in Southeast Asia., and offering a new basis for other regionally-focused scholarship to thrive —from textual Buddhology to history to anthropology. It opens up new possibilities for understanding the early spread of Buddhism within different landscapes across Asia.

Stephen

SERIES: ART & ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOUTHEAST ASIA: HINDU BUDDHISTTRADITIONS

April 2024

Hardback • S$78 / US$56

ISBN: 978-981-325-213-4

264pp / 235 x 187mm

15 maps and 95 images in full colour

A. Murphy is the Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art at SOAS, University of London.

Ya-Chen Ma

translated by Elizabeth Smithrosser

Images of War: The Cultural Construction of Qing Martial Prowess

The mechanisms by which the Manchu rulers of Qing dynasty China maintained their hegemony over a vast empire have long fascinated scholars, with New Qing History models challenging older Sinicization models in recent years. This book adds a new dimension to these debates, from an unlikely source: art history. Two seemingly disparate fields of enquiry are brought together in this innovative work, its English translation long-awaited. Ming and Qing painting and visual culture and Ming and Qing history, especially military history are brought into dialogue here. This book interprets Manchu rule over China proper through the lens of how the Qing emperors modified Han scholarofficials’ culture to construct imperial power. Manchu military culture, in particular, is re-examined by investigating the history of the visual commemoration of military accomplishments. While images of war have long been a marginal topic in the history of Chinese art and politics, government officials’ military achievement pictures featured in numerous literati writings of the Ming dynasty. Their popularity was not confined to circles of Han elites but also took on commercial potential, and went beyond Chinese borders including influencing Manchu leaders, later to become Qing rulers. This trajectory of development took such images from celebrations of individual deeds and personal accomplishments to manifestations of the military might of the Qing empire and revealed that martial ethos and its expression was not a static part of the Manchu formula. Rather, much of the military culture of the Qing empire was appropriated from Han elite culture. This is an innovative work of disciplinary boundarycrossing.

Ya-chen Ma is a professor at Institute of History, National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.

Elizabeth Smithrosser is a lecturer at the Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University.

June 2024

Paperback • S$88 / US$72

ISBN: 978-981-325-212-7

448pp / 235 x 187mm

100 images in full colour

Janet Hunter, Patnaree Srisuphaolarn, Pierre van der Eng and Julia S. Yongue editors

Ethics,

Business and Capitalism

Thailand and Indonesia in an Asian Perspective

Taking cues from the Japanese concept of ethical or stakeholder capitalism, the chapters in this book demonstrate that the business activities of firms in Thailand and Indonesia are in various ways guided by their perceptions of morality in society and concerns about the environment. It is likely that foreign influences contributed to this development, for example through the expansion of Japanese subsidiary firms from the 1980s or the spread of foreign articulations of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) since the 2000s. Companies in both countries may exercise a degree of pragmatism in how they developed these activities. However, in many ways, the perceptions of morality in business that many entrepreneurs and companies in Thailand and Indonesia shaped and adhere to are their own responses to the dynamic political, social and economic factors that have shaped the business environments of both countries.

Janet Hunter is Saji Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics and specializes in the economic development of modern Japan.

Patnaree Srisuphaolarn is an associate professor in International Business, and her research interests include corporate social responsibilities and Thai contemporary business history.

Pierre van der Eng is Associate Professor at the Australian National University. He teaches international business courses and conducts research in the fields of international business and business history, particularly of Indonesia.

Julia S. Yongue is a business historian who teaches in the Business Economics Department, Faculty of Economics at Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan.

June 2024

Paperback • S$42 / US$38

ISBN: 978-981-325-274-5

350pp / 229 x 152mm

10 b/w maps, 5 colour photos, 9 colour tables

The Politics of the Malayan Communist Party from 1930 to 1948

By 1946, the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) had become one of the most successful communist parties in Asia. From its foundation in 1930, it had built up a membership in the thousands, mainly among Chinese and Indian workers in Malaya. It had forged a mass trade union movement which it led in a constant struggle of attrition against employers and colonial authorities. When the Japanese came, the MCP organised the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), the only effective resistance force, earning grudging support from the British. After the War, when the British returned, the Party launched a highly effective legal campaign for independence, and a better life for Malayans. But by 1948, the MCP had surrendered all these achievements, left its mass organisations to their fate, and taken many of its members underground to launch a disastrous insurrection against the British. The Party withdrew from the political and economic struggle and transformed itself into an Army. It was to be utterly defeated.

To understand these momentous turns of history, a fresh view is required of the Malayan Communist Party as political actor. This book gives a political history of the Party from 1930 to 1948, and explains why the MCP was launched into this collective act of self-destruction in 1948. In particular, Lockwood questions assumptions that post-War politics led inevitably to armed struggle, and questions the accepted narrative of Party Chairman Lai Teck’s treachery. This is a strongly revisionist history of a period, and political force, that has left a lasting mark on the politics of Malaya and Singapore.

David Lockwood is an associate professor and visiting research fellow in History at the University of Adelaide.

“Meticulously researched and lucidly argued....”

– Peter Monteath, Flinders University

April 2024

Paperback • S$34 / US$36

ISBN: 978-981-325-258-5

272pp / 229 x 152mm

David Lockwood

Anna Gasco

The Airport as Urban Territory: The Spatial Effects of Singapore’s Changi Airport

Airports are major drivers of economic development. Serving as vital links to global networks while being firmly rooted in local landscapes, airports’ massive infrastructures and externalities like noise and pollution create tensions, and present considerable challenges. What does this mean for spatial planning? What factors and stakeholders are involved? How to better plan airports and their relationships with urban development? Singapore’s Changi Airport regularly scores among the world’s best from a travellers’ perspective, but what about its impact on its city and its region?

Drawing on a decade of research focused on Singapore and its cross-border region, this book offers an analysis of Changi Airport’s spatial influence at different scales and on different kinds of spaces, including rural areas, industrial and leisure zones, the hinterlands of Singapore’s shiny metropolis. It uncovers the many actors involved, the complex networks of terrestrial linkages and interactions centered around the global hub, and the governance frameworks used to manage these.

The result is not just a revealing portrait of Singapore’s Changi Airport in its region, and the development of a new framework for thinking about how airports interact with their territories, but an exploration of territorial dependencies and their effects on everyday spaces.

Anna Gasco is Head of Urbanism at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, University of the Arts. She is an architect and urban designer with over 20 years of international experience in practice, research, and teaching.

“This book is a must-read for scholars and practitioners of airport urbanism.”

– Max Hirsh, Managing Director, Airport City Academy

May 2024

Hardback • S$65 / US$68

ISBN: 978-981-325-214-1

304pp / 229 x 152mm

13 maps and 144 figures

Timothy P. Barnard editor

Singaporean Creatures:

Histories of Humans and Other Animals in

the Garden

City

Modern Singapore is the Garden City, a biophilic urban space in which society is placed within a managed environment that includes a variety of animals from mosquitoes to humans to polar bears. This book brings together historians to contemplate this human-animal relationship and how it has shaped the society—socially, economically, politically and environmentally— particularly in the past half century. It is a work of historical and ecological analysis, in which various institutions, perspectives and events involving animals provide insight into how the larger society has been formed and developed in Southeast Asia in the last half century. The interaction of all Singaporean creatures thus provides a lens through which we can understand the creation of a modern, urban nation-state, reflecting the outcomes of the Anthropocene in local history.

Timothy P. Barnard is an associate professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore, where he specializes in the environmental and cultural history of island Southeast Asia.

January 2024

Paperback • S$36 / US$36

ISBN: 978-981-325-238-7

288pp / 255 x 190mm

35 b/w images

Dale Fisher chief editor

Infectious Disease Emergencies: Preparedness

and Response

For too long, the theory and practice of infectious disease outbreak response has been the domain of a small number of experienced responders. The COVID-19 pandemic brought global attention to the requirements of effective outbreak response, and the need for preparation across the key pillars. Decisionmakers, early career practitioners and those in the field now have access to a comprehensive text that brings together evidence based and practical insights from the best in the business.

Dale Fisher, Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, was chair of WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network prior to and throughout most of the pandemic. In this massive collaborative effort, he marshals nearly 100 top public health leaders and experts from the front lines to present 37 chapters on pandemic preparedness and response, drawing heavily on experiences from COVID-19, as well as from Ebola, MERS, SARS-1, influenza and other outbreaks of modern times. The contributors include experts from health ministries and Centres for Disease Control and national public health institutions around the world, from international organizations like the WHO, MSF, IFRC and UNICEF and from research institutions and various NGOs from dozens of countries, adding to the diversity and richness of the descriptions.

The book can be used as a reference or as a textbook, where each chapter describes the features of outbreak preparedness, including field epidemiology, risk communications, managing health services in a pandemic, vaccine management, leadership, contact tracing and laboratory management and testing amongst others.

Dale Fisher is Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, head of Medical Services at the National University Hospital System, and senior advisor to the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.

June 2024

Hardback • S$72 / US$67

ISBN: 978-981-325-247-9

480pp / 254 x 178mm

150 charts and figures

Tara Davenport and Nilufer Oral editors

UNCLOS at 40:

Essays in Honour of Ambassador Tommy Koh

To commemorate 40 years since the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and in honour of one of the main architects of UNCLOS, Singapore’s Ambassador Tommy Koh, this edited volume of essays brings together law of the sea judges, scholars and practitioners to explore a wide range of issues. It explores the reasons for the continuing endurance of UNCLOS as the foundation for the governance of the oceans, and looks ahead to new challenges.

Tara Davenport is co-head of the Oceans Law and Policy Team at CIL and has taught, researched and published extensively on a range of law of the sea issues. Nilufer Oral is an internationally recognized expert in law of the sea, marine environment and climate change, and is currently a member of the ILC and director of the Centre for International Law (CIL), National University of Singapore.

“Is the UNCLOS capable of withstanding the test of time, given the many challenges that have emerged …? The resounding consensus is that UNCLOS continues to be relevant.”

– S Jayakumar, former Foreign Minister of Singa pore

DISTRIBUTED BY NUS PRESS FOR THE CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW, NUS

May 2024

Paperback • S$36 / US$32

ISBN: 978-981-187-667-7

248pp / 229 x 152mm

Chen Tienshi Lara

translated by Louis Carlet

Stateless

“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 Chinese parents in Yokohama’s Chinatown. What does it mean to be stateless? What does it feel like?

In a lively blend of life writing, auto-ethnography, and study of stateless communities around Asia, this book unpacks the idea of citizenship by showing the hidden everyday narratives and lived experiences of stateless persons who have no legal ties to any nation state. Originally published in Japanese, this adapted and updated English edition critically engages with questions of borders, mobility, belonging, and identity.

We follow Chen’s engaging autobiographical account of her bi-cultural upbringing and Japanese education, and how her experience of statelessness eventually led her into a career spanning academia and activism. Across different levels of analysis, the author points out the contradictions inherent in the concepts of nationality, nation-state and citizenship, in a world where individual nationality, identity and experience are increasingly complex. She concludes that the current system of regulating individuals with citizenship is unworkable in the long run. Stateless is a fascinating read on borders, states and identities.

Chen Tienshi Lara is a professor at the School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University.

Louis Carlet is a translator and interpreter.

November 2023

Paperback • S$36 / US$34

ISBN: 978-981-325-232-5

256pp / 229 x 152mm

19 b/w images

Sally Frances Low

Colonial Law Making: Cambodia under the French

In Colonial Law Making, Sally Low draws on colonial archives to reveal the contests and transactions that shaped justice in the French protectorate of Cambodia (1863–1954). She compares Cambodia with other indirectly colonised countries in Southeast Asia, demonstrating the significance of different methods of colonial domination. Her work crosses the boundaries of comparative legal history, area studies, and sociology to show the structural as well as the contingent factors that made colonial law.

Sally Frances Low holds a doctorate in legal history from the University of Melbourne and has worked extensively in Cambodia and Southeast Asia.

“Sally Low’s innovative study of legal reform in French colonial Cambodia is a vital addition to the conversation on the legacies of colonialism on nation-building, governance, and the law in postcolonial nations.”

– Sokhieng Au, Northwestern University

“In this pioneering study Sally Low shows how a hybrid, multi-jurisdictional legal system in Cambodia emerged from the indigenous system during French colonial rule. Students of colonial law-making in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the world will find this book essential reading.”

– Craig J. Reynolds, Australian National University

SERIES: ASAA

SOUTHEAST ASIA PUBLICATIONS SERIES

November 2023

Paperback • S$38 / US$36

ISBN: 978-981-325-244-8

272pp / 229 x 152mm

2 maps, 9 b/w images, 1 diagram, 2 tables

Malaysiakini and the Power of Independent Media in Malaysia

Malaysiakini was founded in 1999 by Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran, two young Malaysians who met as overseas students in Australia. One of the many online portals that sprung up in the wake of Reformasi, a movement sparked by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad’s 1998 firing of his deputy Anwar Ibrahim, there was no reason to think that Malaysiakini would be different from the other blogs and portals that covered the trial of the charismatic former deputy PM. Yet this would be a mistake, as Malaysiakini wanted to do something much more important than report on Reformasi: its founders intended to bring independent journalism to Malaysia in hopes of changing the country.

Based on more than fifteen years of observation of newsroom practices, this book is an intimate portrait of the people and issues behind Malaysia’s only truly independent media outlet. The author illustrates Malaysiakini’s particular mix of idealism in action, with attention to how “sensitive” issues such as race, religion, politics, and citizenship get worked out in practice in the newsroom. This attention to the inner workings of one of the most important media institutions in the region yields not only a deep newsroom ethnography, but a nuanced, rich history of modern Malaysia.

Janet Steele is Professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs at George Washington University.

“Everyone who cares about independent journalism can and should learn from Malaysiakini’s example. There is no better place to start than reading Janet Steele’s book…”

– Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

September 2023

Paperback • S$32 / US$32 / MYR88

ISBN: 978-981-325-240-0

208pp / 229 x 152mm

10 b/w images

Janet Steele

Hugh de Ferranti, Masaya Shishikura and Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes editors

Unsilent Strangers: Music, Minorities, Coexistence, Japan

This collection of essays on the music of migrant minorities in and from Japan examines the central role music plays in the ongoing adjustment, conciliation and transformation of newcomers and “hosts” alike. It is the first academic text to address music activities across a range of migrant groups in Japan––particularly those of Tokyo and its neighbouring areas. It is also the first to juxtapose such communities with those of Japanese emigrants as ethnic minorities elsewhere. It presents both archival and fieldwork-based case studies that highlight music in the dynamics of encounter and attempted identity making, under a unifying framework of migration.

A radical change in policy with the 2019 introduction of a new “Specified Skilled Worker” visa category marked the beginning of Japan’s “new immigration era” (imin gannen). All authors in this volume interrogate and shed light on the bureaucratically disseminated slogan of tabunka kyōsei, rendered in English as “multicultural coexistence”. The concept itself and the many problems of realizing this ideal are examined through ethnography-based accounts of current minorities, including South Indians, Brazilians, Nepalis, Filipinos, Iranians and Ainu domestic migrants, and in light of comparative historical accounts of California and Australia. This volume will be of interest to ethnomusicologists, students of the cultures of migrant communities, and those engaged with cultural change and diversity in Japan and East Asia.

Hugh de Ferranti is a researcher of Japanese music culture and history based at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Masaya Shishikura is an associate professor at Huizhou University and a research fellow at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes is a professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Shizuoka.

“Unsilent Strangers is a scholarly work that allows us to listen for ways by which music expresses minority identities in and through Japan.”

– Christine Yano, University of Hawai`i, Manoa

August 2023

Paperback • S$42 / US$38

ISBN: 978-981-325-236-3

320pp / 229 x 152mm

16 figures, 11 tables, 37 b/w images

Marnie Feneley

Reconstructing God: Style, Hydraulics, Political Power and Angkor’s West Mebon Viṣṇu

In December 1936, a villager was led by a dream to the ruins of the West Mebon shrine in Angkor where he found the remains of a bronze sculpture. This was the West Mebon Viṣṇu, the largest bronze remaining from pre-modern Southeast Asia, and a work of great artistic, historical and political significance. Prominently placed in an island-temple in the middle of the vast artificial reservoir, the West Mebon Viṣṇu sculpture was a key focus point of the Angkorian hydraulic network. Interpretations of the statue, its setting, date and role, have remained largely unchanged since the 1960s, until now. Integrating the latest archaeological and historical work on Angkor, extensive art historical analysis of the figure of Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin in Hindu-Buddhist art across the region, and a detailed digital reconstruction of the sculpture and its setting, Marnie Feneley brings new light to this important piece.

Framed with a useful update on the latest archaeological and historical insights into the history of the Angkor World Heritage Site, this new understanding of the West Mebon Viṣṇu sculpture reorients our understanding of religious and political change in Angkor in the 12th century. Fully illustrated in colour throughout, the book will be of interest to art historians and curators, historians of Southeast Asia, and anyone with an interest in the art and history of Angkor.

Marnie Feneley is an accomplished scholar, with 20 years of experience in academia, museums and galleries in Australia and Southeast Asia. She specialises in the nexus between Southeast Asian art history, archaeology and religion.

“Dr. Feneley’s book makes an important contribution to the study of Classical Southeast Asia. In it she tackles one of the most enigmatic and unique sites in all Cambodia…. This publication constitutes a significant step forward in our understanding of the integrated nature of Angkor’s art, water management, and society.”

– John Miksic, Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore

September 2023

Hardback • S$72 / US$85

ISBN: 978-981-325-053-6

368pp / 235 x 185mm

163 colour illustrations, 47 b/w illustrations

Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia

Established by a collective of scholars and curators with the aim of looking and listening closely to the discursive spaces of art in, from, and around the region we refer to as Southeast Asia, from an historical perspective. The journal presents a necessarily diverse range of perspectives not only on the contemporary and modern art of Southeast Asia, but indeed of the region itself: its borders, its identity, its efficacy, and its limitations as a geographical marker and a conceptual category. As such, the journal is defined by a commitment to the need for and importance of rigorous discussion, of the contemporary and modern art of the domain that lies south of China, east of India, and north of Australia. The journal publishes twice a year (March and October).

This journal can be accessed at https://muse.jhu.edu/ journal/716. Southeast of Now is indexed in Scopus and the Directory of Open Access Journals.

For editorial enquiries, contact the editors at southeastofnow@gmail.com For individual or institution subscription enquiries, email us at orders.nuspress@nus.edu.sg https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/collections/southeastofnow

China: An International Journal (CIJ)

An internationally refereed journal published for the East Asian Institute, NUS in February, May, August and November by NUS Press. Based outside China, America and Europe, CIJ aims to present diverse international perceptions and frames of reference on contemporary China, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. The journal invites the submission of cuttingedge research articles, review articles and policy comments and research notes in the fields of politics, economics, society, geography, law, culture and international relations. The unique final section of this journal offers a chronology and listing of key documents pertaining to developments in relations between China and the 10 ASEAN member-states.

CIJ is indexed and abstracted in Social Sciences Citation Index®, Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition, Current Contents®/Social and Behavioral Sciences, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Bibliography of Asian Studies and Econlit.

CIJ is also available online in Project Muse (an electronic database for journals in the humanities and social sciences). For more details, visit https://muse.jhu.edu or email muse@muse. jhu.edu.

Individual copies may be purchased through https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg

For institution subscription enquiries, email us at orders.nuspress@nus.edu.sg

For editorial enquiries, contact the editors at cij@nus.edu.sg https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/collections/cij

Goh Geok Yian & John N. Miksic editors

Southeast Asian Site Reports

epress.nus.edu.sg/sitereports

The Southeast Asian Site Reports series is intended to make archaeological data available for comparative study to all scholars who work on Southeast Asian archaeology, as well as the active community of students of archaeology and volunteers in the region. Aside from descriptions of the archaeological project, these reports generally include:

• research questions addressed by the project, and analysis of results

• site maps and stratigraphic drawings

• tables providing quantitative data and statistics on specific types of artifacts

• illustrations of the main types of artifacts discovered (photographs and drawings)

• laboratory analyses of mineral composition, identification of organic materials, the ancient environment, dating methods and results

This information is typically difficult to obtain for Southeast Asian sites, especially for the historical period. It is hoped that these efforts to develop an online publication template, and tools for the management of images and other data, will encourage more sharing of data across national boundaries.

The latest updates in Southeast Asian Site Reports are reports on:

• Pulau Saigon

• St. Andrew’s Cathedral

• The Istana Kampung Gelam

• The Empress Place

Goh Geok Yian is associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University. John N. Miksic is emeritus professor at the National University of Singapore.

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In 2006 Singapore University Press was succeeded by a new NUS Press to reflect the name of its parent institution and to align the Press closer to the university’s overall branding.

The Press publishes academic, scholarly and trade books of importance and relevance to Singapore and the region. While the Press has an extensive catalog that includes titles in the fields of medicine, mathematics, science and engineering, the Press is particularly interested in manuscripts that address these subjects:

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Notes

1 S$ prices are applicable for purchases in Singapore only.

2 All prices and information in this catalogue are current at the time of printing (January 2024) and may be subject to change.

3 Potential authors are invited to download our author guidelines at https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/pages/prospective-authors

Abbreviations and Icons

Singapore dollars

S$ US$ US dollars

Available Worldwide

Cover illustration: Block 49, Toa Payoh Lorong 5. Photo by Darren Soh.

NUS Press

National University of Singapore

NUS Press publishes books and journals with a regional focus on Asia and a disciplinary focus on the humanities and social sciences.

As the university press of the National University of Singapore, NUS Press supports the university’s mission by publishing for Singaporean, Southeast Asian and global academic communities, for communities of practice and publics reading in English. Our books are available in more than 500 great bookshops around the world, and are held by top research and public libraries, in print and digital form. We love selling books in a competitive marketplace, but we are also active in developing Open Access models of scholarly communication.

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