Rangoon circa 1900 was known as ‘one of the best show towns in the East’. As the capital city of Burma, then ruled from Calcutta as a province of India, it was home to more Indian nationals than Burmese. In this cosmopolitan context, two vernacular arts complexes — the Parsi theatre of India and the popular zat-pwe of Burma — flourished, competed, and converged. This article documents the 55-year long engagement of Parsi theatre in Burma within the larger history of global theatrical flows in the Indian Ocean. It highlights the story of Dosabhai Hathiram, a theatre man who rooted himself in Rangoon his entire life. And it asks, why was Parsi theatre celebrated elsewhere in Southeast Asia as a vector of modernity, and yet in Burma it left scarcely a trace behind?

Across the Theravada Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia, the Vessantara Jataka has long been the most famous of the stories (jatakas) of the previous lives of the Buddha. However, little attention has been paid to the jataka's historical vicissitudes. Drawing on comparisons with neighbouring Thailand, this essay suggests there have been significant differences in the jataka's performances and interpretations in Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia and Laos. This essay seeks to historicise understandings of the Vessantara Jataka, showing how social movements, state policies and global pressures have shaped understandings of the jataka differently in each country.

This article examines the relationship between an important local spirit cult and the construction of Isan political identity in Chaiyaphum province, northeast Thailand. Isan subjectivity has largely been studied through social or political-economic lenses. This study looks, however, at the spiritual experiences and ritual performances that crucially manufacture a local version of personhood. The spectacular annual performance of social memory and historical commemoration of Phaya Lae is constitutive of political identity for the people of Chaiyaphum province. I argue that the rituals surrounding the Phaya Lae cult enable the people of Chaiyaphum to perceive their subjectivity as Thais via the integration of the deity into the historical imagination of the state. I argue further that such local performances of spirit cults sustain Thailand as a ‘ritual state’ in which power and prestige are maintained by ritual enactments both in everyday life and ceremonial events. Through mediumship, the periphery draws charisma from the central Thai state and in turn ritually sustains the potency of the centre.

This article concerns divergent visualisations about the Ifugao Rice Terraces, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Philippines, which remain central to the economy and lives of the indigenous Ifugao. It focuses on the contrast between the Ifugao internal notion of ‘good’ and the visual emphasis on ‘beautiful’ associated with heritage bodies’ management and conservation of the terraced landscapes. These divergent visualisations frame various actors’ expectations of the terraces. In particular, this article features the community involvement in forums on mapping of core and buffer zones of the World Heritage clusters, and their responses to and criticisms of conservation initiatives in relation to their perceived impact on their livelihoods.

Since the 2008 rice crisis, Malaysia's rice policies have been caught between government efforts to raise production and its support of the country's monopoly rice importer (Bernas). This article argues that when the politics behind the country's policies are revealed, the paradox is more apparent than real. The three principal policy components — gratifying Barisan Nasional's coalition partners in East Malaysia by expanding the acreage devoted to rice; buttressing the rural Malay economy by providing subsidies through a yield-enhancing programme; and relying on big business for financial support (Bernas's new owner is one of Malaysia's richest businessmen) — aim to serve the same end: to perpetuate UMNO's political power amid increasing electoral competition.

Edward Van Roy's Siamese melting pot: Ethnic minorities in the making of Bangkok is a tour de force and one of the most important books on the history of Bangkok and late-modern Thai history ever to be published. It is clearly written and presented, it provides excellent maps, and brings to light little-known sources and surprising facts about the history of the most iconic neighbourhoods in the city. It exposes the histories of various Muslim, Mon, Lao, Vietnamese, Chinese, European, Indian, and other communities in late Ayutthaya and Bangkok, as well as highlights various ways of seeing Bangkok as a feudal city, a vibrant port-city, or a galactic polity. Van Roy also reveals the complexities of defining ethnicity and class in Bangkok's changing neighbourhoods. In this review article I will look closely at two issues Van Roy exposes that need some theoretical and critical interrogation: the ‘galactic polity/mandala’, and ‘ethnicity’. Then I will provide a short vignette about the Chettiar community in Bangkok and the idea of Hinduism in Bangkok history that both supports and supplements Van Roy's excellent research. I write this not to discount or criticise Van Roy's monumental achievement, but because I believe a book this important to the field deserves serious attention and engagement.