New Books Network

About Nick Cheesman

I am a Fellow in the Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University. A law-and-society scholar interested in the politics of courts, state violence and political order, I do documentary and observational field research in mainland Southeast Asia, primarily in Myanmar and Thailand.
Host, Interpretive Political & Social Science; Co-host, Southeast Asian Studies; for comments or to suggest a book to feature, contact me at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au
Nick's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Nick:

Southeast Asian Studies April 15, 2021

Labor and Politics in Indonesia

Teri L. Caraway and Michele Ford

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
How did Indonesia’s labour movement go from being small and divided at the demise of the New Order regime in 1998 to play lead parts in politics some two decades …
Interpretive Political and Social Science April 7, 2021

Interviewing in Social Science Research

A Relational Approach

Lee Ann Fujii

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
In this very special episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science we feature Lee Ann Fujii’s Interviewing in Social Science Research: A Relational Approach (Routledge, 2018), which …
Southeast Asian Studies March 1, 2021

Fighting for Virtue

Justice and Politics in Thailand

Duncan McCargo

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Anyone who has taken any interest in the politics of Thailand at all in the last two decades could not help but have noticed the part that the country’s judiciary …
Interpretive Political and Social Science January 11, 2021

Authoritarian Apprehensions

Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria

Lisa Wedeen

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
How has the Syrian regime been able to bear the brunt of the challenges raised against it? And, what can we learn about the seductions of authoritarian politics more generally …
Southeast Asian Studies October 20, 2020

The Constitution of Myanmar

A Contextual Analysis

Melissa Crouch

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
The tail end of the twentieth century was a good time for constitutional lawyers. Leapfrogging around the globe, they offered advice on how to amend, write or rewrite one state …
Interpretive Political and Social Science October 15, 2020

Interpretive Social Science

An Anti-Naturalist Approach

Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
In Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach (Oxford University Press, 2018), Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely make a case for why interpretivism is the most philosophically cogent approach currently on …
Southeast Asian Studies August 17, 2020

Liberalism and Democracy in Myanmar

Roman David and Ian Holliday

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Democracy is a popular topic among scholars of politics in Southeast Asia. Liberalism is not. Or at least it hadn’t been up until the last few years, which have seen …
Interpretive Political and Social Science June 3, 2020

Against the Grain

A Deep History of the Earliest States

James C. Scott

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press …
Southeast Asian Studies April 15, 2020

Containing Contagion

The Politics of Disease Outbreaks in Southeast Asia

Sara E. Davies

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
At the start of 2020 few of us would have recognized the face of the current director general of the World Health Organization. Three months later, and in the midst …
Interpretive Political and Social Science March 30, 2020

Elucidating Social Science Concepts

Frederic C. Schaffer

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
For the third installment in our special series on interpretive political and social scientific research, Frederic C. Schaffer joins us to discuss his Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interpretivist Guide …
Southeast Asian Studies March 10, 2020

Becoming Arab

Creole Histories and Modern Identity in the Malay World

Sumit K. Mandal

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
In the wake of the so-called war on terror we’ve become accustomed to racialized portrayals of the Arab as an inflexible and threatening other to the mores and ways of …
Interpretive Political and Social Science November 29, 2019

Everyday Exposure

Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley

Sarah Marie Wiebe

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
In a foreword to Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley (University of British Columbia Press, 2016), the public philosopher James Tully writes that, “Every once …
Southeast Asian Studies October 22, 2019

Luxury and Rubble

Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon

Erik Harms

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
What happens when market-oriented policy reforms butt heads with a single-party state’s strictly maintained limits on political freedoms? That question sets the terms for Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession …
Interpretive Political and Social Science August 19, 2019

Interpretive Research Design

Concepts and Processes

Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
This episode is the first in a new series, New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science, which will feature works on interpretive research design and practice alongside recently published …
Southeast Asian Studies July 23, 2019

In Plain Sight

Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand

Tyrell Haberkorn

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
In the preface to In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018) Tyrell Haberkorn asks, echoing Pakavadi Veerapaspong, if and when it might one …
Southeast Asian Studies April 1, 2019

The Traffic in Hierarchy

Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma

Ward Keeler

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Michael Walzer once began a book with the advice of a former teacher to “always begin negatively”. Tell your readers what you are not going to do and it will …
Southeast Asian Studies November 19, 2018

Vietnamese Colonial Republican

The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung

Peter Zinoman

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Over the course of the 1930s, Vietnamese author Vũ Trọng Phụng published eight novels, hundreds of works of narrative nonfiction, stories, plays, essays and articles. He was a best-selling writer …
Southeast Asian Studies October 3, 2018

A History of Ayutthaya

Siam in the Early Modern World

Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
The dramatic fall and destruction of Ayutthaya at the hands of the Burmese in 1767 has been the subject of films, television shows, songs and books for popular audiences and …
Southeast Asian Studies July 27, 2018

Of Beggars and Buddhas

The Politics of Humor in the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand

Katherine A. Bowie

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
From the sidelines of the Asian Studies Association of Australia’s biennial conference, where she presented the inaugural keynote address of the Association of Mainland Southeast Asia Scholars, Katherine A. Bowie …
Southeast Asian Studies June 29, 2018

Cambodia Votes

Democracy, Authority and International Support for Elections 1993–2013

Michael L. Sullivan

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Ahead of a nominal general election scheduled in Cambodia for the end of July 2018, Michael Sullivan, author of Cambodia Votes: Democracy, Authority and International Support for Elections 1993–2013 (NIAS …
Southeast Asian Studies May 30, 2018

The Lisu

Far from the Ruler

Michele Zack

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Recent years have brought a burgeoning interest in how highland people in mainland Southeast Asia live and communicate along and across the boundaries geographically assigned states whose lowland people and …
Southeast Asian Studies April 30, 2018

The Immortals

Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma

Guillaume Rozenberg (Trans. Ward Keeler)

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
“It is difficult to characterize this fascinating book,” George Tanabe writes in his short preface to The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015) …
Southeast Asian Studies March 27, 2018

Behind the Facade

Elections under Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia

Lee Morgenbesser

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Since the 1990s, vast sums of money and time have been invested in training and resources to hold elections around the world, including in parts of Southeast Asia. The conventional …
Southeast Asian Studies January 9, 2018

The New Way

Protestantism and the Hmong in Vietnam

Tam T. T. Ngo

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Think of Christianity in Southeast Asia today and what might come to mind is the predominantly Catholic Philippines, or the work of the Baptist church among linguistic and cultural minorities …