NEW 🇮🇩 Elites are calling for the rollback of direct elections for local executives, on the pretext of curtailing money politics and fiscal efficiency. Yet they refuse to consider easy reforms that would achieve both these ends while preserving one of the key achievments of Reformasi.
22.02.2026 23:11 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Elites are calling for the rollback of direct elections for local executives, on the pretext of curtailing money politics and fiscal efficiency. Yet they refuse to consider easy reforms that would achieve both these ends while preserving one of the key achievments of Reformasi.
22.02.2026 23:11 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇹🇭 For decades, governments have sought to dam and divert rivers in the Salween River Basin—and for decades, communities have resisted under often deeply repressive political conditions. @zalifung.bsky.social explores their repertoire of "slow resistance" in this essay drawing on her PhD research
24.12.2025 07:09 — 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇹🇭 Police are in many ways the ultimate “street-level bureaucrats”—those who do the difficult on-the-ground work of connecting policy with ordinary people. As such, they play a key role in shaping the real-world nature of citizenship in contemporary Thailand, as Bavo Stevens' research explores.
11.12.2025 23:08 — 👍 5 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Prabowo Subianto says Indonesia was drained of US$31 trillion worth of its national wealth by Dutch colonisers. But conceptualising the nature of wealth transfer from colony to metropole—let alone accurately measuring it—isn’t such a straightforward business, argues Pierre van der Eng.
01.12.2025 05:02 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Too big to fail, and too big to succeed, Jokowi’s new capital city eventually came to be pushed forward by little more than the former president’s need to justify its existence, writes Anders Kirstein Moeller. www.newmandala.org/nusantara-th...
22.10.2025 19:20 — 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
NEW: 🇹🇭 The battle over a historic Chinese temple slated to be lost to commercial development is putting property logic against moral geography in central Bangkok, writes Ying-kit Chan.
16.11.2025 23:57 — 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 The scale of 2025's flooding disaster is a direct consequence of extractive industries' degradation of local ecosystems. But many environmental groups are deterred from speaking out about these drivers of destruction by a government not averse to sanctioning NGOs that challenge its policies.
22.01.2026 23:10 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Despite post-independence progress, the gap between Indonesia's per-capita GDP and that of the Netherlands' is as big as it was two centuries ago. Colonial extraction, policy choices, and post-independence development paths are all ingredients in this persistent economic disparity.
08.02.2026 06:15 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 "These floods are the cumulative result of long-term decisions regarding land use, infrastructure, and regulations. Extreme rainfall should be viewed not as the primary cause of disaster but as a trigger that highlights deeper failures in governance and accountability."
08.02.2026 06:12 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
BOOK REVIEW 🇲🇾 "Anwar, like many politicians, excels as a political philosopher but falters in practice, guilty of preaching democracy while entrenching authoritarian tendencies, and universal Islam while tolerating repression of other faiths."
12.02.2026 07:17 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
BOOK REVIEW 🇲🇾 "Anwar, like many politicians, excels as a political philosopher but falters in practice, guilty of preaching democracy while entrenching authoritarian tendencies, and universal Islam while tolerating repression of other faiths."
12.02.2026 07:17 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Despite post-independence progress, the gap between Indonesia's per-capita GDP and that of the Netherlands' is as big as it was two centuries ago. Colonial extraction, policy choices, and post-independence development paths are all ingredients in this persistent economic disparity.
08.02.2026 06:15 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 "These floods are the cumulative result of long-term decisions regarding land use, infrastructure, and regulations. Extreme rainfall should be viewed not as the primary cause of disaster but as a trigger that highlights deeper failures in governance and accountability."
08.02.2026 06:12 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Excited to see some of my early findings from my research on policing in Thailand published in the @newmandala.bsky.social
can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
NEW 🇮🇩 Using early-modern Javanese manuscripts, we can read new insights into the cultural significance of ancient temples in Islamic Indonesia—and go beyond colonial-era narratives of their “abandonment” and “discovery”.
09.12.2025 04:17 — 👍 7 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇻🇳 Nguyễn Thị Thu Huyền and Chen Yi Ting's ethnography of the relocation of Hmong graves for a tourist site near the Vietnam–China frontier explores how ethnic minorities internalise the state's developmentalist logic via spiritual practices—challenging usual narratives that emphasise resistance.
24.12.2025 07:19 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇲🇾 "Reform of recruitment and work permit systems that reproduce de facto debt bondage and isolate workers from their families have costs for migrant workers and Malaysian society more broadly. But entrenched political economy factors give too many political actors a stake in the current system."
24.12.2025 07:11 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Indonesian official homophobia is not monolithic. One homophobia aims to eradicate ‘deviant’ sexualities, but another casts queer people as victims. By negotiating the two, LGBT organisations can secure a measure of freedom and dignity for their communities. www.newmandala.org/lgbt-organis...
15.01.2026 09:54 — 👍 3 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 The scale of 2025's flooding disaster is a direct consequence of extractive industries' degradation of local ecosystems. But many environmental groups are deterred from speaking out about these drivers of destruction by a government not averse to sanctioning NGOs that challenge its policies.
22.01.2026 23:10 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Indonesian official homophobia is not monolithic. One homophobia aims to eradicate ‘deviant’ sexualities, but another casts queer people as victims. By negotiating the two, LGBT organisations can secure a measure of freedom and dignity for their communities. www.newmandala.org/lgbt-organis...
15.01.2026 09:54 — 👍 3 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇻🇳 Nguyễn Thị Thu Huyền and Chen Yi Ting's ethnography of the relocation of Hmong graves for a tourist site near the Vietnam–China frontier explores how ethnic minorities internalise the state's developmentalist logic via spiritual practices—challenging usual narratives that emphasise resistance.
24.12.2025 07:19 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇲🇾 "Reform of recruitment and work permit systems that reproduce de facto debt bondage and isolate workers from their families have costs for migrant workers and Malaysian society more broadly. But entrenched political economy factors give too many political actors a stake in the current system."
24.12.2025 07:11 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇹🇭 For decades, governments have sought to dam and divert rivers in the Salween River Basin—and for decades, communities have resisted under often deeply repressive political conditions. @zalifung.bsky.social explores their repertoire of "slow resistance" in this essay drawing on her PhD research
24.12.2025 07:09 — 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
My essay on “slow resistance” to long-proposed hydropower dams & diversions in the Salween River Basin is out with @newmandala.bsky.social ! It’s based on my PhD research & an article co-authored with @drvanessalamb.bsky.social in Antipode. www.newmandala.org/slow-resista...
24.12.2025 06:42 — 👍 8 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0
NEW 🇹🇭 Police are in many ways the ultimate “street-level bureaucrats”—those who do the difficult on-the-ground work of connecting policy with ordinary people. As such, they play a key role in shaping the real-world nature of citizenship in contemporary Thailand, as Bavo Stevens' research explores.
11.12.2025 23:08 — 👍 5 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Using early-modern Javanese manuscripts, we can read new insights into the cultural significance of ancient temples in Islamic Indonesia—and go beyond colonial-era narratives of their “abandonment” and “discovery”.
09.12.2025 04:17 — 👍 7 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 Prabowo Subianto says Indonesia was drained of US$31 trillion worth of its national wealth by Dutch colonisers. But conceptualising the nature of wealth transfer from colony to metropole—let alone accurately measuring it—isn’t such a straightforward business, argues Pierre van der Eng.
01.12.2025 05:02 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇮🇩 What can we learn about the distribution and grassroots political influence of Indonesia's pesantren from government data?
01.12.2025 04:32 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
NEW 🇵🇭 The political economy of kickbacks is central to why the Philippine government's strategy for coping with climate change is still too fixated on physical infrastructure, write Joseph Alegado and Cleo Calimbahin. www.newmandala.org/corruption-c...
16.11.2025 23:59 — 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0