1st Edition
Agrarian Angst and Rural Resistance in Contemporary Southeast Asia
Agrarian transformations, market integration and globalization processes are impacting upon rural Southeast Asia with increasingly complex and diverse consequences. In response, local inhabitants are devising a broad range of resistance measures that they feel will best protect or improve their livelihoods, ensure greater social justice and equity, or allow them to just be left alone. This book develops a multi-scalar approach to examine such resistance occurring in relation to agrarian transformations in the Southeast Asian region.
The contributors take a fresh look at the diversity of sites of struggle and the combinations of resistance measures being utilized in contemporary Southeast Asia. They reveal that open public conflicts and debates are taking place between dominators and the oppressed, at the same time as covert critiques of power and everyday forms of resistance. The book shows how resistance measures are context contingent, shaped by different world views, and shift according to local circumstances, the opening and closing of political opportunity structures, and the historical peculiarities of resistance dynamics.
By providing new conceptual approaches and illustrative case studies that cut across scales and forms, this book will be of interest to academics and students in comparative politics, sociology, human geography, environmental studies, cultural anthropology and Southeast Asian studies. It will also help to further debate and action among academics, activists and policymakers.
1. Shifting Fields of Rural Resistance in Southeast Asia Sarah Turner and Dominique Caouette 2. Rural Resistance and the Art of Domination Dominique Caouette and Sarah Turner 3. "Weapons of the Week": Selective Resistance and Agency among the Hmong in Northern Vietnam Sarah Turner and Jean Michaud 4. ‘Now the companies have come’: Local Values and Contract Farming in Northern Thailand Andrew Walker 5. Resisting Local Inequities: Community-Based Conservation on Palawan Island, the Philippines Wolf Dressler 6. Oil Palm and Resistance in West Kalimantan, Indonesia Lesley Potter 7. Development and its Discontents: The Case of the Pak Mun dam in Northeastern Thailand Erik Kuhonta 8. State-Society Relations and the Diversity of Peasant Resistance in Vietnam Tran Thi Thu Trang 9. Indonesia’s Agrarian Movement: Anti-Capitalism at a Crossroads Vu Tuong 10. Paradigm Shift: The ‘September Thesis’ and Rebirth of the ‘Open’ Peasant Mass Movement in the Era of Neoliberal Globalization in the Philippines Jennifer C. Franco and Saturnino M. Borras Jr 11. Is Rice Non-Negotiable? Malaysian Resistance to Free Trade with the United States Sandra Smeltzer 12. Scaling-Up Rural Resistance Globally Dominique Caouette 13. The Persistence of Resistance: Analyzing Responses to Agrarian Change in Southeast Asia Tim Forsyth
Biography
Dominique Caouette is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Université de Montréal, Canada. Sarah Turner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, McGill University, Montréal, Canada.
'Unlike many edited collections, this book forms a well-integrated, coherent whole that can be read fruitfully from cover to cover.' - Rob Cramb, University of Queensland, USA
'Dominique Caouette and Sarah Turner have an ambitious agenda in this rich and insightful volume. [...] The chapters are well-edited and pithy, allowing inclusion of a solid range of cases and perspectives. The inclusion of images and maps adds to the sense of grounded context.' - Meredith L. Weiss, State University of New York, USA
'This edited collection has been thoughtfully compiled and is an absorbing read for anyone who has spent time in rural Southeast Asia. [...] Agrarian Angst and Rural Resistance in Contemporary Southeast Asia should become a valuable resource not only for scholars of Southeast Asia but also for those with more general interests in understanding rural resistance in other regions of the Global South.' - Adam Lukasiewicz, York University, Canada
'Highly informative and relevant in a time of major changes in the Southeast Asian landscape. Policymakers and academics trying to understand the intricate balance between economic growth and agragarian resistance should read this book.' - Roland Cheo, National University of Singapore
'The work of anthropologists, geographers, media analysts, political scientists, and sociologists who weave together both their engagement with social science debates and their deep knowledge of countries in Southeast Asia, this book enhances our knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of resistance not only in that region but among subordinate people around the globe.' - Ben Kerkvliet, Australian National University
'Judging by the impressive quality of the essays assembled here, the study of agrarian resistance in Southeast Asia is in very good hands indeed. Thirty years of technical, political, demographic, and social change have been fully and coherently theorized in this new assessment. It's gratifying to see earlier work (including one's own!) superceded in such style.' - James C. Scott, Yale University, USA
