The article highlights the role of partisan ethnography in studying the chains of co-optation of grassroots environmental activism in ecologically and politically sensitive contexts. In Thailand, such chains are often undergoing the process of institutionalization of eco-Buddhist approaches to nature conservation, also concurring with the detachment of grassroots socio-environmental activism from the recent, urban based pro-democracy uprisings. The discussion will focus on the recent history of the eco-politics related to natural resources conservation in the Nan River Basin (Northern Thailand). It will describe how, since the 1980s, eco-Buddhist NGOs, Royal think tanks, international cooperation organizations, and corporate C.S.E.R. programs, which comply with the latter agencies, have systematically tended to manipulate pioneer, grassroots eco-political imagination and the organisational know-how of local environmental activists. These powerful institutional actors demonstrated interest in the Buddhist moralization of local ecological beliefs and praxis as a strategy to afford privileges of access to land, water, and forest resources through forms of internal “green grabbing”. At stake here is the fact that, beyond the grabbing of Thai river basins’ contested landscapes, activists’ radical imaginations and alter-political practices – an intangible component of such landscapes - are subject to a form of intellectual and political grabbing. The anthropological enterprise and the ethnographic encounter, conceived as partisan collaboration, nevertheless show that forms of patient resistance to such structural dynamics of co-optation might also express an unexpected source for the creative rearticulation of dissent and alter-political imaginations.

In this paper, I marked the critical alter-political works of urban scholar-activists in the Philippines. Slums are at the heart of capitalist dispossessions. Slumdwellers live, survive, negotiate, and resist on an everyday basis. In the Philippines, the struggles of slum community organisations are strongly influenced, formed, and pulled in divergent ideological trajectories by contending larger political formations.

I draw on my own experience and that of 20 Filipino urban scholar-activists with varied political commitments, reflecting on decades of community work, to highlight the alter-works and challenges of navigating the web of political heterogeneity within urban poor organisations and movements. By scholar-activists, I do not refer solely to those who are based in universities, but to the many who struggle every day to unearth subaltern political knowledges and collectively fight for the right to adequate housing, as well as, for some, the right to the city. I enumerate the multiple functions and necessary labours of being 'embedded' in these complex politics. We engage in political advising, framing, networking, organizing, translating, and capacity-building. Caught in a complex web that may necessitate strategic essentialisation, silencing, and foreclosures, scholar-activists play a crucial role of strategic facilitation that connects collective forms of living among urban surplus lives and corrodes neoliberal urban dispossessions. These alter-works are continuous efforts towards situated solidarities, where urban scholar activists critically draw from and reshape ‘inherited’ social movement frames and strategies grounded on actually existing subaltern realities, capacities, and political opportunities.

The Cold War is often depicted in binary terms: communists against anti-communists, the left against the right, or the free world versus the communist world. However, during the latter part of the Cold War, particularly following the 1979 war between China and Vietnam, earlier Cold War binaries no longer applied, and new alliances were established. These alliances often brought people with the same enemies together, despite having little in common ideologically. This article examines the historical circumstances and Cold War geographies of ethnic Khmu anti-Lao PDR and anti-Vietnamese insurgents, including their alliances with right-wing governments in Thailand and the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC). As neutralists, these Khmu occupied a political space rarely discussed in relation to the Cold War. Although the PRC provided training, weapons, and supplies to the neutralist Khmu between 1979 and 1983, later their political leader, General Kong Le, had a falling out with the Chinese, and the PRC stopped supporting his largely ethnic minority soldiers. However, up until 1989, the Thai government continued to allow the Khmu to maintain bases in Thailand for launching military operations inside Laos, until the Thai government adopted the “Battlefield to Marketplace” policy. Some Khmu continued resisting inside northwestern Laos during the early 1990s, but with declining numbers of soldiers and decreased outside support, armed resistance ended in 2003. It is critical that the geographies and alliances of the later Cold War be differentiated from those of the earlier years of the Cold War. This transnational insurgency deserves attention.

Critical scholars and intellectuals are often viewed as vanguards of intellectual rigor, moral integrity, and left-leaning/left-liberal politics. In particular, their trajectories tend to be examined from a sympathetic lens: as supporters of lower-class social movements. Unfortunately, this approach overlooks the varied agency of these critical scholars and their complex relationship with the very movements that they often claim to represent. It obscures their potentially unequal socioeconomic status and cultural gap with the movements they engage with. This is not to dismiss their contribution or deny the reality of state repression against some of them, but a more grounded, sober approach to studying these cognitive workers is needed.

This study investigates the value-appropriating, politically-moderating, status-seeking tendency in some parts of critical knowledge production and activism. It advances several claims. First, the increasing neoliberalisation of the research sector exacerbates the process of class differentiation among critical scholars and intellectuals. The majority join the swelling rank of precarious cognitariat, whereas a selected stratum becomes part of the professional managerial class. Second, the latter stratum contains new intellectual actors who enjoy economic, cultural, and, political benefits from their advantaged position at the expense of precarious scholar-activists and marginalised communities, as exemplified in their public celebrity status or appointment into policymaking decisions. Lastly, as an illustration, and a form of self-criticism, I interrogate my position as an early-career researcher of Indonesian politics, show my own role and complicity in the neoliberal research industrial complex, and reflect on possible ways out of this politico-intellectual impasse.

This paper takes a transregional approach to examine primary historical sources that reveal the significance of the experiential and professional meanderings of Chua Boon Hean (1905-1995) for Southeast Asian studies. Chua was a writer and artist who emigrated from Chaozhou in southern China to Malaya in the 1920s. He became a prominent figure in the film industry and is recognised as a cultural icon of post-independence Singapore. Chua’s story calls for a careful re-examination of the ambiguities and connections between ‘diaspora’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘borders’. While policymakers had reasons to adopt such labels to manage a diverse population in a colonial and post-colonial setting, researchers must recognise the limits and implications of such efforts. Experiences of social belonging and ethnic identity – more malleable than categories might allow – repudiate this approach of rigid labelling. By adding new dimensions and fresh primary sources from Chua’s archive to ongoing discussions in Southeast Asian studies, this paper illuminates the fluidity of Chinese diasporic networks and ethnic identity overseas. By examining Chua’s story through a transregional historical lens, this paper lays the groundwork for a more imaginative approach to understanding the elastic and fluid process of identity formation in modern Asia. Such a perspective can contribute significantly to the current climate of heightened mobilities and politicised exchanges in Southeast Asia.

Transnational marriage is a controversial topic in Hmong communities in the United States, Laos, and Thailand, and has sometimes led to intra-ethnic disputes and conflicts. Initially, many of the Hmong American men who travelled overseas to marry Hmong Lao or Thai women were already married. Furthermore, the Hmong American community has frequently come to believe that economic gain is the primary motivation for Hmong Lao/Thai women to marry Hmong American men. On the other hand, some activists have referred to these marriages generally as “abusive transnational marriages.” The association of economic resources with transnational marriage, including remittances, increased bride prices, and opportunities for migration to the United States, has perpetuated negative stereotypes that frequently overshadow the personal stories of many Hmong Lao/Thai women who do not fit with the stereotypes. For these women, marrying a Hmong American man signifies not only personal gain but also economic advancement for their families. This paper reviews the intricacies related to the topic of Hmong transnational marriage between Hmong American men and their Hmong Lao and Hmong Thai brides. In doing so, we argue that it is important to consider the complexity and nuances associated with Hmong transnational marriages, as they take on various forms that go beyond standard stereotypes.

Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the world’s largest Islamic organisation, is renowned for fostering tolerance in Indonesia. However, recent studies have revealed that the degrees of tolerance NU displays are inconsistent, throwing the organisation’s reputation for acceptance into question. By adopting critical juncture and case study analyses, this article finds that tolerance within NU is dynamic for three reasons. First, it evolves depending on the social-political context of the time. Second, NU upholds tolerance within specific limits, extending it to those who do not contradict the Islamic values it upholds and who do not pose a threat to the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI). Third, the commitment to tolerance by NU’s membership, the nahdliyin, varies and does not always align with NU’s principles.

The nature of Indonesia’s foreign policy has long been understood as non-aligned. It has been associated with the basic tenet of bebas aktif (being independent and active) and the evolving international relations of the state, which demonstrated continuity in its non-side-taking position in the Cold War. However, recently, new trends in Indonesia’s regional and global conduct have emerged, including the diversification of multilateral engagements beyond ASEAN, the strengthening of various forms of strategic partnerships with major Indo-Pacific powers, and the adoption of normative hedging policies in response to sensitive international issues. What explains these developments? The conception of Indonesian foreign policy as being defined by non-alignment is no longer appropriate. This article argues that Indonesia now employs a partial multi-alignment strategy. Nevertheless, limited national power and persistent threat perceptions prevent the state from pursuing a fully multi-aligned strategy.