A new book resulting from an IRASEC research programme has just been published : Atlas de l’Asie du Sud-Est, Les enjeux de la croissance, by Hugues Tertrais.
With 80 maps and infographics, this Atlas is a key to a better understanding of one of the regions where the stakes of growth and the balance of the planet are at stake today.
At the beginning of the 21st century, when the economic centre of the world has shifted to Asia, Southeast Asia has become a vital crossroads.
This Atlas, with (...)

A new book by Jérémy Jammes has been published by Les Indes Savantes : Les Oracles du Cao Ðài - Étude d’un mouvement religieux vietnamien et de ses réseaux (foreword by Georges Condominas), 614 pages.
ISBN : 978-2-84654-351-4 (36 €)
Caodaism has long attracted a range of sometimes pejorative labels, such as “Secret Society”, “politico-religious cult” and “Vietnamese syncretism”, which give a distorted picture of the religious movement and its identity. Caodaism has proved permeable to western (...)

Located on the edge of the Asia-Pacific, Timor-Leste is known for having been the scene of one of the greatest human tragedies of the 20th century : the "Timorese genocide" of 1999 precipitated its independence in 2002, after 24 years of Indonesian annexation. Frequently described as "the poorest country in Asia", Timor-Leste has an oil fund of 15 billion dollars, and in 2011 it even proposed to buy back part of the Portuguese debt.
Analysing in turn the history, the socio-cultural (...)

Michael D. Barr explores the complex and covert networks of power at work in one of the world’s most prosperous countries - the city-state of Singapore. He argues that the contemporary networks of power are a deliberate project initiated and managed by Lee Kuan Yew - former prime minister and Singapore’s ’founding father’ - designed to empower himself and his family.
Barr identifies the crucial institutions of power - including the country’s sovereign wealth funds, and the government-linked (...)

L’Asie du Sud-Est 2014 - Bilan, enjeux et perspectives, sous la direction de Jérémy Jammes et François Robinne, vient de paraître.
Chaque année l’Institut de recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine (IRASEC), basé à Bangkok, analyse les principaux événements politiques, économiques, sociaux, environnementaux ou religieux survenus dans l’ensemble du sous-continent asiatique.
Établissant une rétrospective des faits majeurs de l’année 2013, ce livre aide à mieux comprendre les grands enjeux et les (...)

Reading Post-Conflict Landscapes in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam
The Second and Third Indochina Wars are the subject of important ongoing scholarship, but there has been little research on the lasting impact of wartime violence on local societies and populations, in Vietnam as well as in Laos and Cambodia. Today’s Lao, Vietnamese and Cambodian landscapes bear the imprint of competing violent ideologies and their perilous material manifestations. From battlefields and massively bombed terrain (...)

par Eugénie Mérieau
Cette étude retrace les différents événements fondateurs du mouvement dit des Chemises rouges, depuis leur création embryonnaire à la veille du coup d’État du 19 septembre 2006 jusqu’à leur écrasante victoire électorale du 3 juillet 2011. Offrant un examen détaillé des actions et des motivations des différentes organisations et groupuscules qui composent les Chemises rouges, l’auteur s’attache à décrypter leur rapport au monde, les relations qui les lient à la personne de Thaksin (...)

Politics & Sexuality in Contemporary Indonesia
By Dewi Candraningrum
This study will focus on the Indonesian jilbab, an ubiquitous piece of cloth that covers the hair and neck of women tightly, leaving no skin unconcealed. Achievement and role of jilbab after the authoritarian regime of Soeharto in 1998 is hardly known.
The author examines women perception but also the Sharia Ordinances and the narratives of censorship. Voices of both women and sexual minorities (transgenders, gays, (...)

The Illegal Trade in Arms, Drugs, People, Counterfeit Goods and Natural Resources in Mainland Southeast Asia
Edited by Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Mainland Southeast Asia is one of the world’s key regions for trafficking of illegal goods. It is home to an international trade in small arms, nuclear smuggling rings, human trafficking, contraband and counterfeit goods, illicit currency and smuggled medicinal drugs. The scope and mechanisms of such trafficking, however, are far from understood. “An (...)