The logistics infrastructure projects on Thailand’s Kra Isthmus, which connects two oceans, demonstrate the strategic use of resources for geopolitical purposes, particularly in foreign policy. Historically, the Thai government has instrumentalized these projects to manage relationships with global powers; this reflects the adaptive nature of bamboo diplomacy. Under Prime Ministers Prayuth Chan-o-cha (2014–23) and Srettha Thavisin (2023–24), this strategic approach still persisted. This paper examines the geopolitical significance of the Kra Isthmus projects, focusing on their role in foreign policy within practical geopolitics. By analyzing published interviews of key figures related to the infrastructure projects, actions of Thai and international stakeholders, and commentaries about geopolitical situations from reputable think tanks, this research applies a practical geopolitical reasoning framework adapted from Gearóid Ó Tuathail (2002b) to the international relations concept of bamboo diplomacy. It highlights the Thai government’s efforts to use the Thai Canal and Thai Land Bridge projects to balance international relations, enhance national interests, and avoid interstate conflict.

To go beyond the binary of the abortion debate, this article argues that the Western debate on abortion has been trapped in a pro-life versus pro-choice dichotomy. These two sides of the debate have been idealized by the concept of individualism in the Western liberal context. They focus on individual values, freedom, and the right to privacy, whether it is for the rights of the fetus or the rights of the woman. In Vietnam, women’s bodies have been disciplined by the mechanisms of power at different levels such as population control and Confucian ideology. However, this does not mean that the bodies are always docile. For Vietnamese women, their womb has a meaning beyond being simply a means of reproduction. Women have reclaimed their wombs in different ways; whether abortion is legalized or not in Vietnam, they have the autonomy to make their own choices when it comes to their bodies. This study is based on eight women’s narratives about their abortion experience: how they redefine the meaning of the womb and the ways in which they negotiate regulatory power.

The film Tatlong Maria (Three Marias) (1944) was supposed to be the culmination of Japan’s project of de-Americanizing Philippine cinema during World War II. Being about women, Tatlong Maria was advertised in newspapers and magazines as highlighting the role of Filipino women in the liberation of the Philippines from the influence of American colonialism and the rediscovery of the nation’s Asian roots. This essay analyzes the discourses in these marketing materials to illustrate the bargaining and accommodations that emerged from efforts to establish the “spirit” Filipino women had to embrace in constructing an independent Philippine state under Japan’s sphere of influence. The goal is to determine the expected role of women within this nation-state, identify who determined such roles, and point out the inherent contradictions arising from defining the “Oriental” essence of a Filipino woman.

This article examines the use of the law and legal mechanisms to secure authoritarian power and argues that an authoritarian regime with legitimacy problems relies on these tools for its survival. The study explores Thai politics after the military coup of 2014 as a case study, using content analysis on the Thai constitution and related laws. The findings show that the use of the law is a response to the monarchy’s legitimacy problem: the monarchy uses the military as its agency and the law as a tool. This article concludes that the military government has successfully controlled Thai politics by establishing the National Strategy under the auspices of the 2017 constitution, which was promulgated under the military government for the monarchy’s survival. The 2017 constitution and the political developments under the mechanisms set up in the constitution also resulted in a new form of monarchy-military-political party partnership in Thai politics.

By the time Singapore celebrated 25 years of nation building in 1984, the city-state was being praised for its “good governance” and economic achievements. However, what has constantly been overlooked is that these achievements were the result of a compliant civil service. After the People’s Action Party (PAP) was elected to office in 1959, it cracked down on its leftist political opponents and the press, while introducing “attitudinal reform” of the civil service. Civil servants learned very quickly that they were not supposed to question the wisdom of the ruling party. While Singapore today continues to highlight the Westminster system of government as a positive legacy of British colonialism, the reality is that the civil service is no longer politically neutral. This article explains how the PAP government worked to dominate the civil service in the 1960s before using it to serve its own political interests by the 1980s.

This essay recounts and critically examines the anti-drug campaigns in the Philippines during the presidencies of Joseph Estrada (1998–2001) and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001–10). In January 2000 Estrada’s secretary of the interior, Alfredo Lim, embarked on a spray-painting campaign that was short-lived but nonetheless galvanized public awareness of the “drug menace.” Three years later Estrada’s successor, Arroyo, would launch a “drug war” that mobilized various sectors of society. Rooted in a long-standing moral panic around drugs since the 1970s and the emergence of a “methamphetamine epidemic” in the 1990s, these campaigns were characterized by a willingness to resort to extrajudicial measures, the institutionalization of a (more) punitive drug regime, the politicization of drugs, and a discourse that constructed young people simultaneously as victims and criminals. Such approaches and the paradigm behind them foreshadowed Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs more than a decade later and underscore the enduring valence of drugs and drug issues in contemporary Philippine society.

This article examines the effects of coal-mining water infrastructure on the waterscape, farmers’ practices, and ethics in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Focusing on the Pond, a water infrastructure built by a coal mining company, the study reveals its contradictory effects on the local waterscape. Rather than effectively managing wastewater, the Pond produces inconsistent water supply. It generates conflict between farmers and the mining company, creating unequal relationships and increasing vulnerability and dependence. Ecological changes and water uncertainties compel farmers to alter their pest-control practices, compromising their ethic of sama-sama cari makan (“foraging together,” or “surviving together”). Closely connected with Islamic values and local mythology, this ethic promotes thoughtful pest-control practices as it recognizes the existence of pests as rightfully equal to humans in the farm ecosystem. This ethic of relatedness is possible through and within watery connections. This article highlights forms of slow violence, showing how the Pond, as extractive infrastructure, disrupts the waterscape, generates insecurities, and erodes ethics. In a broader context, it explores human-water relationships amid large-scale resource extraction and development in Indonesia.

This study explores one of the untold histories at the margins in Philippine society during the Japanese occupation, focusing on the informal economic activities of marginalized people. Most works on the social history of the Philippines during the Japanese occupation tend to highlight the sufferings that Filipinos went through due to the wartime violence inflicted by Japanese soldiers. But it is important to point out that some people at the margins accumulated their wealth navigating between resistance and collaboration. Their activities in the informal wartime economy have long been ignored in Philippine historiography even though these activities contributed to transformations in local society after the war. Although many works of broader economic history have been published on the wartime economy in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia, analysis of the activities of minor players in the microeconomic sphere—such as the black market, buy-and-sell activities, local gambling, and outlaw activities (including the organization of gangs)—remains fragmented and underexplored. The present study examines two cases during the Japanese occupation to show how marginalized individuals rose to prominence in local society, often through violent means—whether by collaborating with the Japanese or through contacts with guerrilla forces.

This research examines the visual narratives and cultural transformation associated with the ngepan Iban in Borneo through the lens of colonial photographic imagery. During the colonial period various European powers undertook extensive documentation of Indigenous cultures, producing a rich repository of images that have since become critical sources for historical and anthropological analysis. This study explores how these colonial images influenced the representation and understanding of the cultural practices, social structures, and identity associated with the ngepan Iban. By analyzing a selection of historical photographs and illustrations, this research aims to uncover the ways in which colonial visual documentation has both reflected and shaped the perceptions of ngepan Iban culture, highlighting the intersections of colonialism, visual representation, and Indigenous identity. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the impact of colonial documentation on Indigenous cultural narratives and offer insights into the broader implications of visual representation in historical research.

This paper examines civil wars during the First Indochina War in Laos (1945–54). The first civil war emerged between those fighting for Lao independence, the Issara, and those continuing to defend French colonial rule after World War II, the loyalists. The second civil war broke out as the first one ended in late 1949. It was fought between the Royal Lao Government (RLG) and the Pathet Lao. This new civil war was fought over the question of whether Laos was independent and would now be communist. By then the Cold War had begun to loom over the later years of the First Indochina War in Laos. While initially civil war came to Laos as political violence cutting across family, region, and ordinarily divided ethnic lines by 1949, some Lao saw it as a clash between two states, the RLG and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In reality, there were dueling “liberations” of Laos under way by this point, depending on which side one was on in the RLG-Pathet Lao civil war. Interstate war was enmeshed in bloody local civil wars, resulting in a double conflict. This became clear during the Pathet Lao-People’s Army of Vietnam offensives of 1953–54, toward the end of the First Indochina War in Laos. In the aftermath, RLG leaders’ visions of their civil war with the Pathet Lao became distorted by their own rising anti-communist and anti-Vietnamese nationalism.