We examine the extent to which domestic political developments can be understood through a US–China great power lens. Are politically progressive Thais more likely to be pro-US, and more politically conservative Thais likely to favor China? While we find some relationship between liberal domestic political leanings and sympathy for the United States, we also show that conservative domestic political leanings do not automatically translate into support for China.

The mp3 linked above is to a Talking Thai Politics conversation between the article’s first two co-authors discussing their paper and its implications.

No one enters Burmese traffic with any assumptions about fundamental rights. Pedestrians, certainly, enjoy no “right of way.” No one, by the same token, is ever excluded from the game as long as they remain in motion. […] If you get ahead, you were right to try. If you don’t, you were right to yield. What’s to argue?

When it comes to hierarchies, Southeast Asia can be frustratingly (even scandalously) foreign for those of us raised in egalitarian, Western democracies. This is a book which explains clearly and sympathetically, but not uncritically, the logic behind Burma’s hierarchical arrangements with a close focus on the unique role of monks and gender.

Many rural crime sprees punctuated the last two decades of King Chulalongkorn’s reign, but one of the worst broke out in early 1903. A violent gang of robbers repeatedly made off with herds of water buffaloes, consistently eluding the newly established provincial police force…

The interrogation of this group of robbers yielded such a wealth of information about bandit practices that Damrong concluded that it ought to be written down and distributed to the kingdom’s administrators so that they would be better informed in dealing with rural crime.

A Thai prince’s manual on how crime worked in rural Thailand, written in an elevated question-and-answer style no doubt inspired by the Theravāda exegetical tradition.

More than 200 000 monks and some 30 000 temples across the country became an integral part of the so-called “Folk Doctor” movement in the 1980s.

With its tropical climate, lower costs and culture of respect for the elderly, Thailand is attracting families dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s from as far away as Europe.

… the role of Buddhist temples in providing aid and taking care of survivors in the wake of the disaster, including the indispensable function of Buddhist monks to conduct funerals and other ceremonies, and their vital responsibility for helping the survivors overcome their suffering.

However many lives I’ll have to suffer,
I’ll never give my heart you again.

Three poems composed by famed, Thai modernist Angkarn Kallayanapong translated into English by a famed, American modernist.

Angkarn Kalayanapong (1926-2012) was arguably Thailand’s most famous poet of the modern period. His career spanned the era from the 1940s to the 1980s when Thai society was fundamentally transformed by rapid development and the process of globalization. His poetry is a testament to the massive disruption, dislocation, and alienation caused by these changes, and a lament for cultural loss.

Notice in particular how the looting was worse during the Cold War than during the colonial period, with American-backed militias instrumental in the efforts on both sides of the border.

The law of sacred centers imagines space from the inside out.

A fascinating meditation on the way modern culture thinks about space and sovereignty and what is lost, even by the state, when local communities are disrupted.

… these hours were often spent in the company of close friends: women and adolescent girls used the twilight to enjoy the company of female friends, while some youth reported visiting friends’ houses where they played and listened to music, completed their homework or chatted. Others spent their pocket money on movies or karaoke.

On the nightlife of the Karen refugee camps.