Dr Nicholas Long

This course is available on the MSc in Anthropology and Development, MSc in Anthropology and Development (Management), MSc in Religion in the Contemporary World and MSc in Social Anthropology. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course will introduce students to selected theoretical and ethnographic issues in the history and contemporary life of Southeast Asia (including Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines, and Vietnam).

The alleged distinctiveness of Southeast Asian gender relations, political leadership, and experiences of self and emotion have led to ethnographic studies of the region making major contributions to the anthropology of the state, sovereignty, globalisation, gender, identity, violence, and mental health. By providing a strong grounding in regional ethnographic materials, this course will equip students to critically evaluate such contributions and to consider possible further contributions that studies of Southeast Asian might make to anthropological debates. The course will also examine how anthropologists have responded to the interpretive challenges presented by selected aspects of Southeast Asia’s social and political life, such as the legacies of mass violence (e.g. the Cambodian genocide, the Vietnam War, or Indonesia’s massacre of suspected communists), its ethnic and religious pluralism, and the impact of international tourism.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the LT. 1 hour of lectures in the ST.

Film screenings will also take place throughout the Lent Term.

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for presentation in the seminars.

Useful histories of Southeast Asia / Southeast Asian anthropology

M.C. Ricklefs, B. Lockhart, A. Lau, P. Reyes, and M.A. Thwin, A New History of Southeast Asia (2010); V.T. King and W.D. Wilder, The Modern Anthropology of South-East Asia: An Introduction (2003).

Ethnographies

J.M. Atkinson and S. Errington (eds), Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia (1990); J. Barker, E. Harms, and J. Lindquist (eds), Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity (2014); T. Li, Malays in Singapore: Culture, Economy and Ideology (1989); N.J. Long, Being Malay in Indonesia: Hopes, Histories and Citizenship in the Riau Archipelago (2013); C. Schwenkel, The American War in Contemporary Vietnam: Transnational Remembrance and Representation (2009); J.C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009); J.T. Sidel, Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (1999); M. Sinnott, Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-Sex Relationships in Thailand (2004); A.L. Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-way Place (1993).

Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.