Revisiting Ideas of Power in Southeast Asia: Case Studies, Comparisons, Critique

This book builds upon landmark contributions by Lucien Hanks and Benedict Anderson to interdisciplinary scholarship on Southeast Asia, particularly their essays on how worldview and indigenous notions of power have shaped society and politics. Five anthropologists revisit these classic analyses, situating local notions of power in contemporary dynamics through fieldwork, areal comparisons, and historical studies in this volume. Their comparisons, contrasts, and ethnography in contemporary Thailand, Laos, and Indonesia examine local notions of power in relation to hierarchy, socialism, indigeneity, Buddhism, marginalization, and political debates.

The case studies range in focus from intellectual property and religious freedom in Indonesia, understandings of socialism and village-state relations in Laos, changing interpersonal dynamics in fieldwork encounters in Thailand that span four decades, and to inclusiveness and pluralism in interethnic relations between hill and valley peoples across the region over millennia. The case studies are accompanied by an essay on the lasting value of comparative, regional and historical perspectives on Southeast Asia. The essays challenge the mainstream focus on culture as meaning and instead situate cultural trends in history, function, and interpersonal negotiations.

Revisiting Ideas of Power in Southeast Asia will be valuable to researchers and students of Anthropology, Politics, Asian Studies, International Relations, and those interested in the history and geopolitics of Southeast Asia. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Anthropological Forum.