NUS Press - Publishing in Asia, on Asia, for Asia and the World

Exciting NEW releases available immediately!

• Populism in Asia. Across Asia, "populist" leaders emerged on an unprecedented scale around the start of the 21st century. Leading Asian scholars in this book consider the many faces of contemporary populism in the region, analyzing the phenomenon through case studies of political leaders with populist credentials and using these accounts to evaluate the achievements and failings of democracy. Benedict Anderson provides a reflective afterword.
• A History of Modern Singapore, 1819-2005. This fully revised edition, rewritten by CM Turnbull to take into account recent scholarship on Singapore, includes a new chapter on Goh Chok Tong's premiership and the transition to a government headed by Lee Hsien Loong.
• Penang and Its Region: The Story of an Asian Entrepôt. The authors discuss the personal networks that have linked prominent individuals in Penang with neighbouring areas, and then consider the position of the island as a whole within the Southeast Asian region.
• Urbanization, Migration, and Poverty in a Vietnamese Metropolis: Ho Chi Minh City in Comparative Perspectives. This book presents the results of a major interdisciplinary research project that gathered data on more than 1,000 households in Ho Chi Minh City over a three-year period, and on migration flows at the urban destination and in four sending communities in different regions of Vietnam.

Selections of NEW and recent releases of regional interest

• Impressions of the Goh Chok Tong Years in Singapore - NEW. This volume examines the changes that took place during the Goh premiership and assesses its legacy. The 45 essays in this volume review a range of issues from domestic politics and foreign policy to economic development, society, culture, the arts and media. View the book's table of contents.
• [Re]Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - NEW. This book seeks to explain two core paradoxes associated with ASEAN: how have diverse states hung together and stabilized relations in the face of competing interests, divergent preferences, and arguably weak cooperation? How has an association of lesser, self-identified Southeast Asian states gone beyond its original regional purview to shape the form and content of Asian Pacific and East Asian regionalism?
• Studies on Islam and Society in Southeast Asia - NEW. William R. Roff has spent more than forty years studying and writing about the modern history of Islam and Muslims, with special reference to Southeast Asia. This collection reprints a selection of his most notable essays, from historiographical and methodological studies to the development of Islamic educational and other institutions, the nature of the Arab presence in Southeast Asia, and the social significance of the hajj. View the book's table of contents.
• Paths and Rivers: Sa'dan Toraja Society in Transformation - NEW. The product of thirty years of fieldwork, Paths and Rivers offers an unusually deep and broad picture of the Sa'dan Toraja as a society in dynamic transition. The author delves deeply into Toraja social memory to show how people think about their past, and to examine the usefulness of history and myth as a source of identity, a template for action, or a resource for claiming presence.
• Negotiating Asymmetry: China's Place in Asia - NEW. This book explores how the real or imagined norms governing past relations may shape China's future position in the region by considering how relationships have changed over the past two centuries. The volume argues that neither the "Chinese world order" of tribute relations nor the Westphalia model of sovereign equality ever operated effectively in Asia, but suggests that the past does offer strong indicators about the shape of a new order in Asia.
• Workers and Intellectuals: NGOs, Trade Unions and the Indonesian Labour Movement - NEW. Drawing on extensive interviews, this book documents the resurgence of labour activism and explains how activists and workers perceived the position of NGOs in relation to workers and trade unions.
• The Politics of the Periphery in Indonesia - NEW. This thought-provoking volume deals with power struggles and local-national tensions, looking among other things at resource control, the historical roots of regional identity politics and issues relating to Chinese-Indonesians.
• Islam and Nation: Separatist Rebellion in Aceh, Indonesia - NEW. The author reveals how the Free Aceh Movement went from being a quixotic fantasy to a guerilla army in the space of a generation, and explains how a society famed for its Islamic piety gave rise to a guerilla movement that rejected the Islamic goals of its forebears.
• From Rebellion to Riots: Collective Violence on Indonesian Borneo - NEW. This path-breaking study demonstrates that the endemic violence in this vast region is not an inevitable outcome of its ethnic diversity, and that the initial impetus for collective bloodshed is not necessarily the same as the forces that sustain it.
• Muslims and Matriarchs: Cultural Resilience in Minangkabau Through Jihad and Colonialism - NEW. This interpretative expose of Minangkabau social, cultural, and intellectual history covers topics as diverse as the shapes of houses, structures of the family, education, and natural disasters, but each chapter draws readers into much larger social and cultural issues. The result is a deeply revealing assessment of the internal dynamics of a society that has produced a disproportionate number of political and business leaders in Indonesia.

Focus on the arts

• Writing Singapore: An Historical Anthology of Singapore Literature - NEW. This pioneering anthology, which covers more than a century of literary production in a variety of genres, places key texts in a historical narrative allowing them to be resad, studied, critiqued, and treasured. View the book's table of contents.
• Painters in Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Art. Drawing on interviews with artists, cultural officers, curators, art critics, and others in Hanoi, the author surveys the impact artists have had on Vietnam's intellectual life, and reveals a diverse art world. This book is of significant interest to anthropologists and art historians as well as students and scholars concerned with interdisciplinary research on culture and society.

Check out our subject lists for more information on NUS Press books.