EuroSEAS Book Prize 2024
EuroSEAS awarded two book prizes at the 13th EuroSEAS conference (23-25 July 2024) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The winners receive the book prize certificate and € 750.
1. The EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize
The EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize for the best academic book on Southeast Asia published in the humanities – including archaeology, art history, history, literature, performing arts and religious studies.
2. The EuroSEAS Social Science Book Prize
The EuroSEAS Social Science Book Prize for the best academic book on Southeast Asia published in the social sciences – including anthropology, economics, law, politics and international relations, and sociology.
The following books were selected for the shortlist:
Social Science book price shortlist:
-Dwyer, Michael, Upland Geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush. University of Washington Press 2022.
-Moore, Elizabeth et al, Wider Bagan: Ancient and Living Buddhist Traditions. ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 2023.
-Ong, Andrew, Stalemate: Autonomy and Insurgency on the China-Myanmar Border. Cornell University Press 2023.
-Phinney, Harriet, Single Mothers and the State Embrace. University of Washington Press 2022.
Rumsby, Seb, Development in Spirit: Religious Transformation and Everyday Politics in Vietnam’s Highlands. UW Press Books 2023.
-Zakaria, Faizah, The Camphor Tree and the Elephant. University of Washington Press 2023.
Humanities book price shortlist:
-Yorim Spoelder, Visions of Greater India. Cambridge University Press 2023.
-Y-Dang Troeung, Refugee Lifeworlds: The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia. Temple Press 2022.
-Alexandra Kaloyanides, Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom. Columbia University Press 2023.
-Charlotte Setijadi, Memories of Unbelonging: Ethnic Chinese Identity Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press 2024.
-Grace Leksana, Memory Culture of the Anti-Leftist Violence in Indonesia. Amsterdam University Press 2023.
Winner Social Science Book Prize
Upland Geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush by Michael Dwyer is a skillfully
written book on the politics of land grabbing in Laos and how upland governance transpires vis-à-vis historical and contemporary milieu. Providing insights from various actors and stakeholders with the backcloth of neoliberalism, Dwyer maneuvres deftly in interweaving rich ethnographic details with key debates located in the wider scholarship. At once compelling, accessible and informative, Upland Geopolitics is a must read for scholars interested in Laos and the Southeast Asian region, as well as for general readership.
written book on the politics of land grabbing in Laos and how upland governance transpires vis-à-vis historical and contemporary milieu. Providing insights from various actors and stakeholders with the backcloth of neoliberalism, Dwyer maneuvres deftly in interweaving rich ethnographic details with key debates located in the wider scholarship. At once compelling, accessible and informative, Upland Geopolitics is a must read for scholars interested in Laos and the Southeast Asian region, as well as for general readership.
Winner Humanities Book Prize
Yorim Spoelder’s Visions of Greater India deserves the Humanities Book Prize 2024 for its exceptional blend of rigorous historical scholarship, cogent analysis, and crisp, engaging narrative. Spoelder’s patient, detailed exposition offers a subtle yet powerful genealogical critique of the idea of Greater India, in particular, and the anticolonial-nationalist projects in India, more broadly. A timely and compelling intervention in the ongoing debates on identity politics and Indian nationalism, it examines the enduring transnational manifestations and transimperial roots and trajectories of the discourses on Greater India, particularly in relation to Southeast Asia. It covers a very wide range of archival and secondary sources on multiple languages and sets a high bar to aspire for scholars of intellectual history and history of ideas, as well as other fields that concern knowledge production and consumption.