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During the Cold War, the opposing stances of the US and USSR caused a bipolar global system that lacked a unipolar centre of power, leading to a stronger centrifugal pull. The Vietnam War made Southeast Asia a hotbed for these tensions. Following the fall of French troops in Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the US aimed to solidify its position and successfully created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) through the efforts of Secretary of State Dulles and like-minded nations. To explain the political implications, the Michael Brecher geographical framework has been chosen. This framework highlights the dominant and subordinate systems of international relations during the Cold War period and describes the operation and evolution of SEATO. By incorporating guidelines into the charter, the treaty zone became a space where signatories could resolve their issues. This reference framework helps to identify the causal determinant in the stimuli of an individual signatory. Despite being a group of countries with varied interests, the interaction between the US and Thailand during the Vietnam War showed that Thailand's skilful aggregation of marginal gains resulted from its inherent paranoia against the Vietnam syndrome. Furthermore, the study reveals that Thailand had a significant influence in shaping Washington's policy for Southeast Asia and used its gains as a launching pad to control the spread of Communism. Bibliography Entry Javed, Tauseef, Sun Jiandang and Ayisha Khurshid. 2023. "Revisiting Thailand's Paranoia: SEATO As a Safeguard Against Vietnam Syndrome." Margalla Papers 27 (1): 138-154.

Environmental context: Airborne particulate matter (PM) is a major public health risk in Southeast Asia. The annual average concentration of fine PM (PM2.5) in the region is significantly higher than the WHO air quality guidelines, and higher PM2.5 levels were recorded during dry seasons, primarily due to biomass burning. In this paper, we provide an overview of the seasonal variations in concentrations, chemical compositions, and sources of PM in Southeast Asian countries. Airborne particulate matter (PM) in Southeast Asia is the most important air pollutant, causing millions of premature deaths. This review provides an overview of the levels, chemical compositions and sources of PM and compared these with studies from megacities in other regions. Daily average PM2.5 concentrations were lower than polluted megacities such as Delhi but substantially higher than 24-h mean air quality guideline of the WHO. Levels of PM2.5 in maritime continental Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore) were lower than in mainland continental countries (Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos). PM levels are usually two times higher during dry than wet seasons. Organic carbon is a key chemical component, contributing 9–52% of PM mass. SO 4 2 − EN22044_IE1.gif , NO 3 − EN22044_IE2.gif , and NH 4 + EN22044_IE3.gif are major ions and NO 3 − EN22044_IE4.gif / SO 4 2 − EN22044_IE5.gif ratios were notably lower than in megacities in other regions, implying lower emissions from mobile relative to stationary sources. Source apportionment indicates biomass burning is one of the most important sources, particularly during the haze (dry) seasons, followed by road traffic emission in dense-traffic cities such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi. The secondary aerosols contribution to PM mass is usually lower than that in cities from other regions. We suggest future PM source apportionment studies in Southeast Asia to include both inorganic and organic tracers and apply both chemical mass balance and multivariate receptor models. Environmental context. Airborne particulate matter (PM) is a major public health risk in Southeast Asia. The annual average concentration of fine PM (PM2.5) in the region is significantly higher than the WHO air quality guidelines, and higher PM2.5 levels were recorded during dry seasons, primarily due to biomass burning. In this paper, we provide an overview of the seasonal variations in concentrations, chemical compositions, and sources of PM in Southeast Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After pursuing a long academic career as an anthropologist, this article provides my (Mitsuo Nakamura’s) personal academic reflection of how my anthropological approach differs from Geertzian paradigm, why anthropology and Islamic studies should be bridged, and what implications of the conversation between Islamic studies, anthropology, and other social sciences are. By answering the above questions, this reflective article sheds a new light on the relationship between anthropology and Islam and Muslim studies in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. The anthropological studies of Muslims in Southeast Asia that have been heavily influenced by Clifford Geertz through his work, The Religion of Java (1960), are engaged critically in this article. If Geertz and his students pay a more attention to Little Tradition (local culture and practices) and avoid Great Tradition (e.g. religious concepts and teachings), my anthropological approach argues for the importance of incorporating Great Tradition, which is Islamic Studies in the case of Muslim studies in Southeast Asia, in the study of anthropology and vice versa.

o explain ethnicity, scholars have come to an endless discussion providing a wide spectrum of ethnicity throughout the world. Various perspectives have been suggested to comprehend the notion of ethnicity. To this point, there are three most well-known perspectives to explain this term, namely primordialism, instrumentalism, and constructivism approach. Most scholars commonly apply one approach to dissect a case study related to ethnicity. Few have ombined two approaches, for each approach seems to contradict one another. However, this paper suggests that those three approaches can be simultaneously applied if critically used to discern certain case studies related to ethnicity in Southeast Asia. This argument will be elaborated into the analysis of ethnic identity for the minority and majority groups in Indonesia and Thailand.

In this article, Pierre Le Roux gives a very complete view on Jean Baffie’s career. This French transdisciplinary researcher is specialized on Southeast Asia, and more particularly on Thailand. P. Le Roux is taking us along Baffie’s life, from his studies in South of France (Montpellier) to is retirement from his position in CNRS. This biography shows a scholar passionate and really amazing. P. Le Roux presents also after this article a quite complete bibliography of J. Baffie.

Background This paper will report on the successful co-location of a community-based arts and sexual health project that aimed to engage, educate and create testing, treatment and care pathways at a co-located mobile sexual health clinic and community-controlled art gallery in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.Methods: Mixed methods were used to evaluate the project, including a visitor (n = 1181) and artist (n = 85) log book, a convenience audience survey (n = 231), and qualitative semi-structured interviews (n = 13) with artists and audience to explore the effect of arts-based activities on access to sexual health information and services, and stigma and discrimination.Results: In total, 85 artists curated five separate exhibitions that were attended by 1181 people, of which 62% were aged ≤24 years. Gallery attendance improved awareness and participatory and interactive engagement with sexual health information through a medium described as interesting, fun, cool, and unique. The co-located clinic facilitated informal pathways to sexual health services, including HIV/AIDS testing, treatment, and care. Importantly, the project created shared understandings and empathy that challenged stereotypes and myths, reducing stigmatising beliefs and practices.Conclusions: Arts-based programs are transformative and can be effectively implemented, replicated and scaled up in low-resource settings to create awareness and initiate for HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and care. Art-based health programs engages people in their communities, mobilises civil society, builds enabling environments to reduce stigma and discrimination and improves access to testing and prevention; essential features needed to end AIDS in Indonesia (and the Southeast Asia region) while improving the lives of those most vulnerable to infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Anthelmintic treatments are not widely adopted by smallholder farmers in Laos (Lao People's Democratic Republic) to treat bovid Toxocara vitulorum , resulting in high calf morbidity and mortality. Aims: Field trials were conducted to provide baseline efficacy data on an alternative, easy-to-use treatment by provision of fenbendazole-medicated molasses blocks (FMB) in situ. Methods: Participating villages were randomly allocated to the following treatments: (1) conventional orally administered pyrantel, (2) access to FMB, (3) access to non-medicated molasses blocks (MB), and (4) no blocks (control). Faecal eggs per gram (EPG) and weight were monitored in cattle (n = 171) and buffalo calves (n = 44) under field conditions for 48–56 days. Key results: In 2016, the MB treatment was associated with the fastest reduction in predicted average EPG at 2% per day, while FMB and pyrantel had an equivalent reduction of 1% per day, relative to the control (P = 0.062). Predicted average weight also differed significantly among treatments, with pyrantel and MB having the greatest average daily gain at 230 g and FMB at 200 g, which was higher than for control calves at 170 g (P = 0.002). In buffalo calves, treatment was not significantly associated with EPG or weight. The 2018 trial corroborated that FMB and MB treatments were associated with increased EPG reductions in cattle at 3% per day, relative to control calves (P = 0.007). Again, the MB treatment had the greatest predicted average daily gain at 200 g, compared with FMB calves at 160 g and control calves at 150 g (P = 0.005). Conclusions: The field trials provided baseline evidence that FMB and MB have potential applications in reducing environmental contamination of T. vitulorum eggs and may improve calf growth in low-input systems. However, further testing ex situ is required to control for variability in calf weight and T. vitulorum burdens, so as to optimise anthelmintic doses, assess the addition of urea to the block formula and assess product marketability. Implications: If successful, medicated nutrient blocks may be a simple method to reduce calf mortality and morbidity, enhancing the reproductive efficiency of large ruminant production in smallholder farms in developing countries. Uncontrolled toxocariasis contributes to the high rates of cattle and buffalo calf mortality in Laos, threatening efforts to establish food security and alleviate rural poverty. Designing parasite treatments appropriate for low-input traditional large ruminant systems may encourage sustainable adoption of parasite management and fenbendazole-medicated molasses blocks have shown great potential. In addition to assisting daily mustering, the therapeutic effects of the blocks against Toxocara vitulorum could improve agricultural productivity in the tropics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two specimens of Bourret’s Horseshoe Bat, Rhinolophus paradoxolophus, were recently collected from near Kalaw, western Shan State, Myanmar. They represent the first country record of the species as well as a considerable western range extension. A brief discussion of the taxonomic history of R. paradoxolophus is included along with a summary of its known ecology. The distribution is mapped and shows a correlation with areas of limestone karst.

The Philippine archipelago harbours a remarkable diversity of harvestmen, with respect to both taxonomy and complexity of biogeographic origins. Among the armoured harvestmen (suborder Laniatores), six families of distantly related groups occur in this archipelago. Here, we describe a new species of the family Tithaeidae, Tithaeus odysseus sp. nov., discovered during a collecting campaign on the island of Mindanao. The description of this species expands the known distribution of the family and demonstrates another exception to the zoogeographic boundary known as Huxley's Line which putatively separates the biota of the Philippines (excluding the Palawan island group) from the Sunda Shelf biota. Given the coincident distributions of Tithaeidae and the mite harvestman family Stylocellidae (Cyphophthalmi), a group renowned for its poor dispersal ability, we inferred phylogenetic relationships and divergence times of the Philippines lineages of both families by using a comprehensive molecular dating analysis of all Opiliones. The internal phylogeny of Tithaeidae mirrored the biogeography of Philippine Stylocellidae, showing a close affinity between the Philippine and Bornean species. Molecular dating showed contemporaneous colonisation of Mindanao by both families in the Cretaceous. We infer these patterns to reflect faunal connections between the southern Philippines and Borneo via the Zamboanga Peninsula. To render the genus Tithaeus monophyletic, we synonymise Metatithaeus with Tithaeus (new synonymy). We describe a new species of the family Tithaeidae, Tithaeus odysseus sp. nov., discovered during a collecting campaign on the island of Mindanao. The description of this species expands the known distribution of the family and demonstrates another exception to the faunal break called Huxley's Line (separating the Philippine biota from the Sunda Shelf). Molecular dating showed contemporaneous colonisation of Mindanao by the distantly related families Tithaeidae and Stylocellidae in the Cretaceous, likely via the Zamboanga Peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a number of armed conflicts in Southeast Asia and draws out common threads of causality and impact. First, it is argued that internal conflicts continue to afflict the region and act as an obstacle to political reform. Next, the slow process of conflict resolution is highlighted and several reasons stated for why this is the case. The example of Southern Thailand is highlighted to show how poorly some of these conflicts are being managed. Finally, several suggestions are made to help policy-makers in the region improve the process of conflict resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan is playing an active human security role in post-Cold War Southeast Asia, especially in crises where thousands of lives are at stake, displaced, or even last. This approach includes: providing massive financial assistance to the region during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, engaging in peacemaking in Cambodia and Aceh, peacebuilding in East Timor, Aceh, and Mindanao, offering financial and medical assistance when East Asia was hit by the SARS epidemic, and deploying the largest contingent of Japanese troops since the end of World War II for humanitarian assistance to tsunami-stricken Aceh in early 2005. A broad human security framework which encompasses peacemaking, post-conflict peacebuilding, and the dispatch of troops for humanitarian relief in Southeast Asia allows Japan to not only play a more active political role but also to avoid being branded as an aspiring military power by its domestic and international critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New knowledge is produced at great speed and fed into a global epistemic machinery of data banks, publications, and think tanks. In reverse, global knowledge is absorbed and used locally. Locally produced knowledge is on the increase as society moves towards a knowledge society. Social science research adds to knowledge of societies. If it is locally produced, it can be interpreted as reflexive modernization in so far as it provides paradigms for an interpretation of social processes and structures. This article traces the development of social science research on Southeast Asia and its increasing localization. A model is developed to summarize the output of interpretative schemes and published documents. Statistical data on the global absorption of locally produced knowledge are used to measure the extent of the move towards a knowledge society. Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines have relatively high local social science output, whereas Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Laos have low output rates. We diagnose four different paths from 1970 to 2000: Indonesia shows a stable high level of dependence, Malaysia and the Philippines are increasing local output but also increasing dependence, whereas Singapore is increasing output with decreasing dependence on global social science knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade, major progress in malaria control has been achieved in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. However, malaria is still a potentially fatal disease in some hilly-forested areas and continues to be endemic in a few coastal foci. To estimate the risk that stems from the major vectors after a decade of intensive malaria control, an entomological study based on human landing collections was conducted between April 1998 and November 2000 in six study villages (four in Vietnam, one in Cambodia and one in Laos) located in different physio-geographical areas. Five villages were selected in places where new cases of malaria still occurred. In the sixth village, in the northern hilly area of Vietnam, no case of malaria was detected during the past 3 years. In three study villages of the hilly forested areas of Cambodia and central Vietnam, Anopheles dirus A still played an important role in malaria transmission and maintain perennial transmission inside the villages despite its low density. Anopheles minimus A was found in all study villages except in the southern coastal village of Vietnam. Its role in malaria transmission, however, varied between localities and surveys. In one study village of central Vietnam it was almost absent (one specimen collected over 480 man nights), and in another village sporozoite positive specimens (2.8%) were only observed during the first two surveys whereas this species disappeared from the collections from November 1998 onwards (six surveys: 360 man nights). In the northern study site An. minimus A and C were found in all collections, but no local malaria transmission occurred. However, the constant presence of these two species associated with a high longevity (parous rate up around 80% and 65%, respectively), suggests that transmission can occur at almost any time if parasite reservoirs are reintroduced in the area. The proper management of malaria cases and population movement is, therefore, important to prevent outbreaks and the reintroduction of malaria in northern Vietnam. In the study site of the Mekong delta, An. sundaicus occurred at high densities (up to 190 bites/man/night). The recent changes in land use from rice cultivation to shrimp farming probably explains the increase of this brackish water breeding species during the study period. However, none of the 11 002 specimens was positive for Plasmodium circumsporozoite protein (CSP). The relative low survival rate as estimated by the parous rate (around 47 %) may reflect its low vectorial status that could explain the very low malaria incidence (1.9 case/100 persons/year) in this study site. A calculated sporozoite rate of maximum 1/300 000 is enough to explain this low malaria incidence. Despite the successes in malaria control, the vector An. dirus A continues to play an important role in malaria transmission, whereas An. minimus A showed temporal and spatial variation in its role as vector. The role of An. sundaicus as vector could not be confirmed because of the low incidence in the coastal study village. Other Anopheles species may be locally involved, but in the five study villages where malaria is still present they probably do not contribute significantly to malaria transmission. The study also points towards the fact that in Southeast Asia it will become increasingly difficult to incriminate Anopheles species in malaria transmission while the risk for malaria transmission still persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

— The CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research limited area model (DARLAM) is applied to atmospheric transport modeling of haze in southeast Asia. The 1998 haze episode is simulated using an emission inventory derived from hotspot information and adopting removal processes based on SO2.¶Results show that the model is able to simulate the transport of haze in the region. The model images closely resemble the plumes of NASA Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer and Meteorological Service Singapore haze maps. Despite the limitation of input data, particularly for haze emissions, the three-month average pattern correlation obtained for the whole episode is 0.61. The model has also been able to reproduce the general features of transboundary air pollution over a long period of time. Predicted total particulate matter concentration also agrees reasonably well with observation.¶The difference in the model results from the satellite images may be attributed to the large uncertainties of emission, simplification of haze deposition and transformation mechanisms and the relatively coarse horizontal and vertical resolution adopted for this particular simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

— Southeast Asia experienced disastrous haze episodes in 1997 and 1998 as a result of natural factors such as the El-Niño occurrence and its attendant drought, which aided desiccation and facilitated high combustibility of forest resources, and human activities such as widespread burning of forests in the lush tropical environment. The human factors that caused the haze are presented in this paper, and the conclusion is that Nature is not guilty. A comprehensive approach that tackles the root causes of the haze problem is suggested. Particularly, socioeconomic problems of the poor who use fire as part of their land management, promulgation and effective enforcement of environmental laws are needed on the one hand to reduce the frequency and magnitude of haze episodes in the future. On the other hand, education of the public on `safe' behavior during haze episodes is necessary to avert large scale haze-related disasters or to prevent haze from becoming instantly synonymous with disaster in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aeschynanthus Jack, an epiphytic genus with c.160 species, is widespread in SE Asia. We selected 50 species for ITS nrDNA sequencing, to include all biogeographic areas and all infrageneric groupings, which are currently based on seed morphology. Some species were sequenced directly from PCR product; others cloned because of ITS length polymorphisms. The clone sequences were analysed individually and combined in an elision matrix. Results extend earlier findings that Aeschynanthus is divided into two clades, one occurring primarily in mainland SE Asia and the other in Malesia. This pattern is interpreted as indicating an ancient vicariance event followed by dispersal and plate fusion. Clade I has straight or clockwise spiral orientation of the testa cells and clade II anticlockwise spiral orientation. In clade I some species of section Microtrichium form a basal group with other sections being polyphyletic or paraphyletic. In clade II the monophyletic section Aeschynanthus is nested within the paraphyletic basal Microtrichium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically analyses the theory and practice of human resource management (HRM) in Thailand. Thailand emerged against all expectations as the most impressive of the 'tiger economies' with unprecedented growth rates of 8 per cent and above in the 1980s and early 1990s. This paper examines the human resource challenges associated with the industrial expansion during the period of transition from the boom era to the subsequent economic downturn that saw the collapse of the economy in 1997. Based on in-depth interviews with managers across eleven major industrial sectors, observations of office and factory practice, this paper attempts to characterize the diversity of approaches available and how they reflect the social-cultural and economic realities in Thailand today. Three generic HR models are identified: traditional, transitional and progressive. We assess the key definitive features of these models, identify some major thematic differences, and examine the relative importance of these models in the commitment to develop a competent and innovative workforce. Finally, we identify some possible avenues for further research, and set out a number of managerial and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]