Suchergebnisse

In 2020, attention in Thailand focused on the pandemic and on political protest. After some early missteps Thailand managed the pandemic well, eliminating community transmission with a strong curfew, essentially a lockdown, and effective tracking and tracing. Yet the economic impact on Thailand's tourism-dependent economy will continue into 2021. The pandemic interrupted student-led protests against a regime they considered undemocratic, in the wake of the dissolution of the opposition Future Forward Party. After the pandemic was brought under control, the demonstrations resumed, with students demanding constitutional amendments (already under consideration by the parliament), the resignation of the prime minister, and the dissolution of parliament. They added unprecedented calls for reform of Thailand's monarchy. Students argued that reforms designed to fully remove the monarchy from politics would increase respect for the institution. But there were concerns that violence between students and royalists or security forces might ensue.

In 2019, Thailand held its first election in eight years, crowned a new king for the first time in nearly 70 years, and hosted the ASEAN summits for the first time in a decade. It was an eventful year for Thailand, filled with controversy and attempts to restore stability and the democratic legitimacy lost after the coup of 2014. Progress was marred by missteps and irregularities, leaving both stability and legitimacy in doubt.

In the wake of the bloody coup of 1 October 1965, three young Indonesia scholars, Ruth McVey, Fred Bunnell, and Ben Anderson, all working with George Kahin at Cornell University, set out to explain how things had gone so wrong. They began their analysis with a careful examination of the patterns of promotion and transfer in the Indonesian military, which seemed to indicate that tensions between Javanese and other officers played a major part in the coup. Keen to make this information available to other scholars, they quickly wrote up a draft version of their findings and tentative conclusions, and circulated it to a few friends and colleagues. This fateful decision, ironically, would reshape our understanding of Siam. Subsequently banned from entering Indonesia, McVey and Anderson would produce influential work on Siam, while mentoring younger scholars through thesis supervision and edited volumes. This collection,Exploration and irony in studies of Siam over forty years, is comprised of nine of Anderson's articles each outlined below, with an introduction by Tamara Loos, a successor of Anderson as director of Cornell's Southeast Asia Program. Loos' introduction places the articles in historical perspective, and in the context of Anderson's own personal history, including his networks of colleagues and students, and his other work. The essays provide an opportunity to reflect on Anderson's contribution to Siam Studies, as they illuminate the influence he had in opening up new directions for research, and new ways of conceptualising Thai politics.

The Thai government in 2013 faced numerous challenges: a gradual decline in popularity, continuing insurgency in the South, problems with the economy and economic strategy, and difficult relations with the military. These challenging issues on the agenda led to widespread demonstrations and intractable conflict by the end of the year.

In 2012, Thailand continued to take steps toward the creation of a new normal. That new normal encompassed, not always successfully, reconciliations between Red and Yellow adherents, the government and the military, the government and the courts, factions in the Pheu Thai Party, and between the government and Southern insurgents. By year's end, some normalcy had been achieved, although the future of Thaksin, reconciliation between the colors, and the violence in the South remained unresolved.

Studies of the formation of national identity have highlighted the importance of national pilgrimages, akin to sacred religious pilgrimages. However, less attention has been paid to the effect of religious pilgrimages on national identities. In this article, I examine the ways that religious pilgrimages have shaped identities in the Jawi community, particularly early in the twentieth century, when nationalism spread through Southeast Asia. Given the deeply personal nature of pilgrimages, I do this primarily through an exploration of the religious pilgrimage and later life of one well-known leader from Pattani, Haji Sulong Abdulkadir al-Fatani. I find that this approach leads to a more nuanced consideration of the ways that plural identities, even conflicting plural identities, are often held by individuals.

The year 2007 marked a return to parliamentary rule in Thailand, with a new Constitution approved in August and elections in December. With democracy, some fear the return of popular former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, overthrown in the coup of 2006. Attempts by the coup group to contain Thaksin's influence continued throughout the year.