This lively survey of the peoples, cultures, and societies of Southeast Asia introduces a region of tremendous geographic, linguistic, historical, and religious diversity. Encompassing both mainland and island countries, these engaging essays describe personhood and identity, family and household organization, nation-states, religion, popular culture and the arts, the legacies of war and recovery, globalization, and the environment. Throughout, the focus is on the daily lives and experiences of ordinary people. Most of the essays are original to this volume, while a few are widely taught classics. All were chosen for their timeliness and interest, and are ideally suited for the classroom.

AcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationMapsIntroduction: Southeast Asia and Everyday LifePart 1. Fluid Personhood: Conceptualizing Identities 1. Living in Indonesia without a Please or Thanks: Cultural Translations of Reciprocity and Respect / Lorraine V. Aragon 2. Toba Batak Selves: Personal, Spiritual, Collective / Andrew Causey 3. Poverty and Merit: Mobile Persons in Laos / Holly High 4. A Question of Identity: Different Ways of Being Malay and Muslim in Malaysia / Judith NagataPart 2. Family, Households, and Livelihoods 5. Maling: A Hanunóo Girl from the Philippines / Harold C. Conklin 6. Marriage and Opium in a Lisu Village in Northern Thailand / Kathleen Gillogly 7. Merit and Power in the Thai Social Order / Lucien M. Hanks, Jr.Part 3. Crafting the Nation-State 8. Recording Tradition and Measuring Progress in the Ethnic Minority Highlands of Thailand / Hjorleifur Jonsson 9. Everyday Life and the Management of Cultural Complexity in Contemporary Singapore / John Clammer 10. Youth Culture and Fading Memories of War in Hanoi, Vietnam / Christina SchwenkelPart 4. World Religions in Everyday Life: Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity 11. The Ordination of a Tree: The Buddhist Ecology Movement in Thailand / Susan M. Darlington 12. Javanese Women and the Veil / Nancy Smith-Hefner 13. Everyday Catholicism: Expanding the Sacred Sphere in the Philippines / Katharine L. WiegelePart 5. Communicating Ideas: Popular Culture, Arts, and Entertainment 14. Cultivating "Community" in an Indonesian Era of Conflict: Toraja Artistic Strategies for Promoting Peace / Kathleen M. Adams 15. The Fall of Thai Rocky / Pattana Kitiarsa 16. Everyday Life as Art: Thai Artists and the Aesthetics of Shopping, Eating, Protesting, and Having Fun / Sandra Cate 17. Eating Lunch and Recreating the Universe: Food and Cosmology in Hoi An, Vietnam / Nir AvieliPart 6. War and Recovery 18. Living with the War Dead in Contemporary Vietnam / Shaun Kingsley Malarney 19. Producing the People: Exchange Obligations and Popular Nationalism / Elizabeth G. Traube 20. The Question of Collaborators: Moral Order and Community in the Aftermath of the Khmer Rouge / Eve Monique ZuckerPart 7. Global Processes and Shifting Ecological Relations 21. When the Mountains No Longer Mean Home / Chris Lyttleton 22. "They Do Not Like to Be Confined and Told What To Do": Schooling Malaysian Indigenes / Robert Knox Dentan, Anthony (Bah Tony) Williams-Hunt, and Juli Edo 23. Narratives of Agency: Sex Work in Indonesia's Borderlands / Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons 24. Just below the Surface: Environmental Destruction and Loss of Livelihood on an Indonesian Atoll / Gene AmmarellReferencesSelected Film ResourcesContributorsIndex