The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.
Beginning in December 2019, the coronavirus swept quickly through all regions of the world. COVID-19 has wreaked social, political and economic havoc everywhere and has shown few signs of entirely abating. The recent development and approval of new vaccines against the virus, however, now provides some hope that we may be coming to the beginning of the end of the pandemic. This volume collects papers from a conference titled Economic Dimensions of COVID-19 in Indonesia: Responding to the Crisis, organized by the Australian National University's Indonesia Project and held online, 7-10 September 2020. Collectively, the chapters in this volume focus for the most part on the economic elements of COVID-19 in Indonesia. The volume considers both macro- and micro-economic effects across a variety of dimensions, and short- and long-term impacts as well. It constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of Indonesia's initial response to the crisis from an economic perspective.
Updated by popular demand, this is the fourth edition of this important bibliography. It lists a wide selection of works on or about Myanmar published in English and in hard copy since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, which marked the beginning of a new era in Myanmar's modern history. There are now 2,727 titles listed. They have been written, edited, translated or compiled by over 2,000 people, from many different backgrounds. These works have been organized into thirty-five subject chapters containing ninety-five discrete sections. There are also four appendices, including a comprehensive reading guide for those unfamiliar with Myanmar or who may be seeking guidance on particular topics. This book is an invaluable aid to officials, scholars, journalists, armchair travellers and others with an interest in this fascinating but deeply troubled country.
This book discusses Vietnam’s relations with ASEAN in the period from the early 1970s to mid-1990s. It focuses on the evolution of Hanoi’s view on ASEAN, from denial to integration in the organization. Further, it reveals the reasons behind Hanoi’s decision to join ASEAN in 1995 in the context of the transformation of the overall Vietnam’s foreign policy when the Cold War ended. Relaxation of the Cold War conditions allowed Hanoi to improve understanding of ASEAN that resulted in better Vietnam-ASEAN relations and subsequent Vietnam’s membership in ASEAN.
The author has had access to documents and interviewees that few other researchers can rival. And the richness of the empirical evidence of this book makes a significant contribution to the studies of Vietnam foreign relations in specific and Southeast Asian international relations in general.
"A magisterial overview of the ebullient religious imagination in contemporary Thailand, Capitalism Magic Thailand gives compelling evidence of the ways in which market-based modernity breeds novel, enchanted means of pursuing auspiciousness and profit. In Southeast Asia and elsewhere, Peter Jackson shows, magic and ritual have always been integral to the productivity of capitalism-which in its recently deregulated, multiply-mediated forms has abetted the rise of ever more vibrant cults of prosperity. Jackson's timely and erudite study will add a great deal to enduring debate about occult economies and the limits of reason.”
--Jean Comaroff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Research Fellow, Harvard University
The essays published here began as a series of lectures commemorating the bicentennial of Thomas Stamford Raffles's establishment of a British Station in 1819. The essays draw on thirty-five years of archaeological investigations on and around Fort Canning, new readings of the Malay Annals, early Chinese records reporting Singapore, and the Portuguese and Dutch records to probe and challenge our understanding of Singapore's history before Raffles. Altogether, these essays suggest that Singapore had a pre-1819 past that was deeply connected to the millennium-long maritime history of the Straits of Melaka and its links to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
To Singapore's immediate south, Indonesia's Riau Islands has a population of 2 million and a land area of 8,200 square kilometres scattered across some 2,000 islands. The better-known islands include: Batam, the province's economic motor; Bintan, the area's cultural heartland and site of the provincial capital, Tanjungpinang; and Karimun, a shipbuilding hub strategically located near the Straits of Malacca.
Leveraging on its proximity to Singapore, the Riau Islands—and particularly Batam—have been a key part of Indonesia's strategy to develop its manufacturing sector since the 1990s. In addition to generating a large number of formal sector jobs and earning foreign exchange, this reorientation opened the way for a number of far-reaching political and social developments. Key among them has been: large-scale migration from other parts of the country; the secession of the Riau Islands from the larger Riau Province; and the creation of a new provincial government.
Building on earlier work by the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute on the SIJORI Cross-Border Region, spanning Singapore, the Malaysian state of Johor, and the Riau Islands, and a second volume looking specifically at Johor, the third volume in this series explores the key challenges facing this fledgling Indonesian province.
Adopting a multidisciplinary framework, this book explores three issues: what have been the social, political, and environmental effects of the rapid economic change set in motion in the Riau Islands; to what extent can or should the province seek to reconfigure its manufacturing-based economy; and how have the decentralization reforms implemented across Indonesia affected the Riau Islands.
“Jenkins has succeeded, in a manner like none before him, to convey the feel, spirit, energy and texture of these formative years of Indonesia’s making, marked by violence, triumph and calamitous failure, and brutal intrigue. Jenkins’s Soeharto reveals the man... and his long, mostly quiet emergence, in brilliant contextual detail, and shows how he developed his extraordinary capacity for political adroitness and concise, decisive leadership.”
-- Emeritus Professor R.E. Elson, author of Suharto: A Political Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
When a reluctant President Sukarno gave Lt Gen Soeharto full executive authority in March 1966, Indonesia was a deeply divided nation, fractured along ideological, class, religious and ethnic lines. Soeharto took a country in chaos, the largest in Southeast Asia, and transformed it into one of the “Asian miracle” economies—only to leave it back on the brink of ruin when he was forced from office thirty-two years later. Drawing on his astonishing range of interviews with leading Indonesian generals, former Imperial Japanese Army officers and men who served in the Dutch colonial army, as well as years of patient research in Dutch, Japanese, British, Indonesian and US archives, David Jenkins brings vividly to life the story of how a socially reticent but exceptionally determined young man from rural Java began his rise to power--an ascent which would be capped by thirty years (1968-98) as President of Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation on earth. Soeharto was one of Asia’s most brutal, most durable, most avaricious and most successful dictators. In the course of examining those aspects of his character, this book provides an accessible, highly readable introduction to the complex, but dramatic and utterly absorbing, social, political, religious, economic and military factors that have shaped, and which continue to shape, Indonesia.
ASEAN Centrality: An Autoethnographic Account by a Philippine Diplomat guides us to a deeper understanding of the concept of ASEAN Centrality, through the eyes of one of the Philippines' most reputable diplomats. Outlining both a personal recollection of her extensive experience and adherence to academic discipline, Ambassador Buensuceso puts forth her analysis of ASEAN Centrality as a core element of diplomacy within ASEAN. She then goes further to articulate ASEAN's aspiration for the future of a region that is constantly evolving. This book is a must-read to understand Southeast Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific regional dynamics, as it offers an insight into ASEAN Centrality like no other.
Retno L.P. Marsudi
Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia
