John T Sidel
Biographic Data
| ID | 227291 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John T Sidel |
| GIVEN NAMES | John T |
| FAMILY NAME | Sidel |
| SIGNATURE | SIDEL J T |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 389 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The Sovereign Trickster
With the election of Rodrigo Duterte to the Philippine presidency in May 2016 came a flood of academic work on Philippine politics on a scale not seen since the transition from Marcos to Aquino and from dictatorship to democracy in the mid to late 1980s. Alongside human rights reports on Duterte's murderous “War on Drugs,” and in parallel with commentary on “populism” and “democratic backsliding” in countries across the world, this scholarship fo…
Soekarno and the Promise of Nasakom
Republicanism, Communism, Islam
This book provides an alternate vantage point for understanding the variegated forms and trajectories of revolution across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Việtnam, a perspective that is de-nationalized, internationalized, and transnationalized. The book positions this new vantage point against the conventional framing of revolutions in modern Southeast Asian history in terms of a nationalist template, on the one hand, and distinctive local cultur…
Republicanism, Communism, Islam
In Republicanism, Communism, Islam, John T. Sidel provides an alternate vantage point for understanding the variegated forms and trajectories of revolution across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, a perspective that is de-nationalized, internationalized, and transnationalized. Sidel positions this vantage point in relation to the long-term framing of twentieth-century revolutions in much of modern Southeast Asian history, as, on the one ha…
V annessa H earman . Unmarked Graves
The past fifteen years have witnessed a belated growth of interest in the mass killings of 1965–66 in Indonesia, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people identified with the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, or PKI) and other left-wing organizations in the country. Notable scholarly contributions have included John Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indone…
Rethinking Sovereignty and Stateness in Southeast Asia
This article reflects on the treatment of sovereignty and stateness in South Asia provided by other authors in this special section of the issue in terms of their implications for the study of Southeast Asian history. The article identifies a number of commonalities between the treatment of sovereignty and stateness in South Asia provided in the special section and that found in revisionist scholarship on Southeast Asia over the past few decades
Religious Violence and Conciliation in Indonesia
Murder, Inc., Cavite
Patrons, bosses, dynasties, and reformers in local politics
This chapter provides an overview of the rich literature on local politics in the Philippines dating back to the heyday of ‘patron-client relations’ in the 1960s and early 1970s and the spate of studies of local ‘bosses’, ‘dynasties’, and ‘warlords’ in the 1990s in the wake of the restoration of (decentralized) oligarchical democracy in the country. The chapter revisits the author’s empirical research and comparative analysis of patterns of local…
A Life Beyond Boundaries
The Philippines in 2014
The year 2014 in the Philippines witnessed President Aquino’s administration moving forward with initiatives on multiple fronts, including foreign relations and the peace process in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, even as leading opposition politicians experienced increasing difficulties in the face of anti-corruption charges
Producing Indonesia
Primitive Accumulation and ‘Progress’ in Southeast Asia
More than any other scholar, James C. Scott has drawn attention to the significance of what Marx termed ‘primitive accumulation’ in the historical transformation of the societies of Southeast Asia. Taking Scott's work as its point of departure, this article sketches the broad contours of primitive accumulation across the region from the mid-nineteenth century up through the early twentieth century. The article shows how primitive accumulation unf…
The Philippines in 2013
The year 2013 in the Philippines saw President Aquino’s administration buoyed by mid-term election results in May but otherwise mired in scandal, episodes of violence in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, escalating tensions with China, and difficulties responding to the massive typhoon that hit the Eastern Visayas in early November
Economic foundations of subnational authoritarianism
A growing body of subnational comparative research on democracy has focused attention on 'subnational authoritarianism', in tandem with increasing interest in local politics across the developing world. Unsurprisingly, this evolving field of study has been characterized by a diversity – if not a dichotomy – of approaches, with quantitative and qualitative research proceeding along parallel and sometimes intersecting tracks. But scholars working i…
Nationalism In Post-Independence Southeast Asia
This chapter covers the variegated trajectories of post-independence nationalism in Southeast Asia. In contrast with conventional accounts stressing the management of ethnic diversity, the chapter argues that the greatest challenges and conflicts confronting the new nation-states of the region stemmed from the pressures of post-colonial reintegration into the world capitalist economy and the Cold War-era geopolitical order. Through a set of paire…
The New Middle East
The New Middle East is one of the first comprehensive books to critically examine the Arab popular uprisings of 2011–12. While these uprisings prompted a number of cursory publications, this volume contains meticulous and thoughtful reflections on the causes, drivers and effects of these seminal events on the internal, regional and international politics of the Middle East and North Africa. Although specific conditions in individual countries tha…
The Fate of Nationalism in the New States
In two landmark essays published in 1973, the eminent anthropologist Clifford Geertz offered an early assessment of what he termed 'The Fate of Nationalism in the New States,' referring to the newly independent nation-states of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ranging with characteristic ease and flair across Burma, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Nigeria, Geertz argued that an 'Integrative Revolution' was under way, but one c…
Muslims and Matriarchs
Jeffrey Hadler’s new book, Muslims and Matriarchs: Cultural Resilience in Indonesia Through Jihad and Colonialism is noteworthy and commendable on at least several counts. It is beautifully written, with elegant turns of phrase and well chosen epigraphs, anecdotes, and empirical evidence in support of arguments made clearly, coherently, and, for the most part, convincingly. Muslims and Matriarchs also shows ample evidence of Hadler’s impressive e…
Response to Marc Howard Ross's review of Riots, Pogroms, Jihad
The argument that religious identities are haunted by anxieties is firmly grounded in anthropology, psychology, and social theory. The evidence for such anxieties in Indonesia comes from close reading of Islamic publications in Indonesia and of ethnographic accounts of localities that subsequently experienced episodes of religious violence. There is abundant descriptive evidence of these anxieties in ethnographic accounts and discourse analysis, …
Islamic Narrative and Authority in Southeast Asia
In the academic realm of Southeast Asian Studies in its Cold War-era infancy, Islam was mere putty in the hands of anthropologists, historians, and political scientists keen to construct coherent and compelling understandings of the distinctiveness of ‘their’ region. Most notable in this regard were the early writings of Clifford Geertz, who assimilated Islam within what he called ‘the religion of Java’ and the broader ‘cultural system’ of Indic …
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy Revisited
Barrington Moore, Jr., argued that a vigorous and independent bourgeoisie is a necessary, if insufficient, condition for democracy. This article addresses this thesis through a comparative analysis of class formation in Southeast Asia. Colonial era state policies towards immigrant Chinese merchant minorities shaped the diverging capacities and inclinations of capitalist classes in the region to assert themselves in political life and to assume co…
The Islamist Threat in South East Asia
Professor John Sidel argues that coverage of terrorist events in South East Asia focuses on description, rather than explanation, events rather than causes. He suggests that Islamist forces in South East Asia are in retreat: terrorist violence reflects frustration at a reduction in political influence, not a rising tide of Islamisation. In a review of the situation in four individual countries, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Southern Th…
The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia
In recent years, a steady stream of reportage and commentary has spotlighted a dangerous "Islamist threat" in Southeast Asia. This study, by contrast, offers a very different account. In descriptive terms, this study suggests that such an alarmist picture is highly overdrawn, and it traces instead a pattern of marked decline, demobilization, and disentanglement from state power in recent years for Islamist forces in Southeast Asia. This trend is …
On the ‘Anxiety of Incompleteness’
Over the course of the past decade, the study of religious violence has evolved into a thriving industry of sorts. More than a field of academic research, religious violence is now a topic in which powerful US government agencies, major international institutions and all manner of 'think tanks' and foundations have developed an interest. This paper suggests an alternative approach, both in terms of the specific context of Indonesia and more broad…
Capital, Coercion, and Crime
This book focuses on local bossism, a common political phenomenon where local power brokers achieve monopolistic control over an area's coercive and economic resources. Examples of bossism include Old Corruption in eighteenth-century England, urban political machines in the United States, caciques in Latin America, the Mafia in Southern Italy, and today's gangster politicians in such countries as India, Russia, and Thailand. For many years, the e…
Philippine politics in Town, District, and Province
Accounts of the various local, congressional, and national elections held in the Philippines since 1986 have highlighted three enduring features of Philippine democracy in the post-Marcos era. First of all, large numbers of politicians who held office for many years in the Marcos and pre-Marcos periods have won reelection, as have numerous other members of long-entrenched political families (Soriano 1987; Gutierrez 1992). Secondly, most of these …
Economic foundations of subnational authoritarianism
A growing body of subnational comparative research on democracy has focused attention on 'subnational authoritarianism', in tandem with increasing interest in local politics across the developing world. Unsurprisingly, this evolving field of study has been characterized by a diversity – if not a dichotomy – of approaches, with quantitative and qualitative research proceeding along parallel and sometimes intersecting tracks. But scholars working i…
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy Revisited
Barrington Moore, Jr., argued that a vigorous and independent bourgeoisie is a necessary, if insufficient, condition for democracy. This article addresses this thesis through a comparative analysis of class formation in Southeast Asia. Colonial era state policies towards immigrant Chinese merchant minorities shaped the diverging capacities and inclinations of capitalist classes in the region to assert themselves in political life and to assume co…
Oligarchic Patrimonialism, Bossism, Electoral Clientelism, and Contested Democracy in the Philippines
Macet Total
The streets o f to d ay 's Jak arta are n ot m eant for p ed estrians.The com m uters in their autom obiles and the pedestrians live in tw o sep arate w orld s___ W alking on the streets m eans th at one h as n o access to a ca r, no access to a p ro tective netw ork , and n o access to anybody anyw here.W h at such people ca rry w ith them is all they h ave.Jak artan s in th eir p assin g ca rs, on the o th er hand, incessan tly ru n arou nd the…
The Fate of Nationalism in the New States
In two landmark essays published in 1973, the eminent anthropologist Clifford Geertz offered an early assessment of what he termed 'The Fate of Nationalism in the New States,' referring to the newly independent nation-states of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ranging with characteristic ease and flair across Burma, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Nigeria, Geertz argued that an 'Integrative Revolution' was under way, but one c…
Indonesia in Asean
Response to Ileto
(2002). Response to Ileto: Or, Why I Am Not an Orientalist. Philippine Political Science Journal: Vol. 23, No. 46, pp. 129-138
Southeast Asian affairs 1995
Journal Article Southeast Asian affairs 1995 Get access Southeast Asian affairs 1995. Pasir Panjang: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. 1995. 400 pp. Pb.: S$ 18.50. ISSN 0377 5437. John Sidel John Sidel 1School of Oriental and African Studies Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 72, Issue 3, July 1996, Pages 634–635, https://doi.org/10.2307/2625660 Published: 01 July 1996
A Life Beyond Boundaries
Producing Indonesia
The Islamist Threat in South East Asia
Professor John Sidel argues that coverage of terrorist events in South East Asia focuses on description, rather than explanation, events rather than causes. He suggests that Islamist forces in South East Asia are in retreat: terrorist violence reflects frustration at a reduction in political influence, not a rising tide of Islamisation. In a review of the situation in four individual countries, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Southern Th…
The underside of progress
This article focuses on the role of violence, intimidation, and political conflict in setting the terms under which industrialization and other forms of capitalist development are proceeding in suburban growth zones in the Philippines. Conflicts, often violent and protracted, over land usage and labor rights have pitted the suburban poor—tenant farmers, squatters, and laborers—against powerful local government officials, real estate moguls, manuf…
Siam and its Twin
Any understanding of corruption in Thailand and the Philippines must rest upon a broader analysis of the phenomenon of ‘bossism’ in numerous localities in these two countries. The common manifestations of bossism - local powerbrokers' exercise of effective monopolies over coercive and economic resources within defined bailiwicks - reflect the subordination of the apparatus of the state to elected officials rather than any shared features of socie…
A New Criminal Type in Jakarta
New Criminal Type in Jakarta: Counter-Revolution Today. James T. Siegel. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. xi +145 pp., notes
Dark Play
There is an old trick for stimulating discussion in otherwise moribund seminars: assign two readings which, taken together, comprise an important debate. In the study of Southeast Asia, for example, the most famous such pairings-the Feith-Benda debate, Scott vs. Popkin-have, no doubt, proven convenient for teachers and instructive for students in numerous courses over the years. As in cockfights, it appears, the key lies in finding a well-paired …
The Philippines in 2014
The year 2014 in the Philippines witnessed President Aquino’s administration moving forward with initiatives on multiple fronts, including foreign relations and the peace process in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, even as leading opposition politicians experienced increasing difficulties in the face of anti-corruption charges
Primitive Accumulation and ‘Progress’ in Southeast Asia
More than any other scholar, James C. Scott has drawn attention to the significance of what Marx termed ‘primitive accumulation’ in the historical transformation of the societies of Southeast Asia. Taking Scott's work as its point of departure, this article sketches the broad contours of primitive accumulation across the region from the mid-nineteenth century up through the early twentieth century. The article shows how primitive accumulation unf…
On the ‘Anxiety of Incompleteness’
Over the course of the past decade, the study of religious violence has evolved into a thriving industry of sorts. More than a field of academic research, religious violence is now a topic in which powerful US government agencies, major international institutions and all manner of 'think tanks' and foundations have developed an interest. This paper suggests an alternative approach, both in terms of the specific context of Indonesia and more broad…
It Takes a Madrasah ’
(2001). ‘It Takes a Madrasah’?: Habermas Meets Bourdieu in Indonesia. South East Asia Research: Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 109-122
The Philippines in 2013
The year 2013 in the Philippines saw President Aquino’s administration buoyed by mid-term election results in May but otherwise mired in scandal, episodes of violence in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, escalating tensions with China, and difficulties responding to the massive typhoon that hit the Eastern Visayas in early November
On the Waterfront
(1995). On the Waterfront: Labour Racketeering in the Port of Cebu. South East Asia Research: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 3-17
Indonesia in Asean
Siam and its Twin
Any understanding of corruption in Thailand and the Philippines must rest upon a broader analysis of the phenomenon of ‘bossism’ in numerous localities in these two countries. The common manifestations of bossism - local powerbrokers' exercise of effective monopolies over coercive and economic resources within defined bailiwicks - reflect the subordination of the apparatus of the state to elected officials rather than any shared features of socie…
Southeast Asian affairs 1995
Journal Article Southeast Asian affairs 1995 Get access Southeast Asian affairs 1995. Pasir Panjang: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. 1995. 400 pp. Pb.: S$ 18.50. ISSN 0377 5437. John Sidel John Sidel 1School of Oriental and African Studies Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 72, Issue 3, July 1996, Pages 634–635, https://doi.org/10.2307/2625660 Published: 01 July 1996
Dark Play
There is an old trick for stimulating discussion in otherwise moribund seminars: assign two readings which, taken together, comprise an important debate. In the study of Southeast Asia, for example, the most famous such pairings-the Feith-Benda debate, Scott vs. Popkin-have, no doubt, proven convenient for teachers and instructive for students in numerous courses over the years. As in cockfights, it appears, the key lies in finding a well-paired …
Philippine politics in Town, District, and Province
Accounts of the various local, congressional, and national elections held in the Philippines since 1986 have highlighted three enduring features of Philippine democracy in the post-Marcos era. First of all, large numbers of politicians who held office for many years in the Marcos and pre-Marcos periods have won reelection, as have numerous other members of long-entrenched political families (Soriano 1987; Gutierrez 1992). Secondly, most of these …
The underside of progress
This article focuses on the role of violence, intimidation, and political conflict in setting the terms under which industrialization and other forms of capitalist development are proceeding in suburban growth zones in the Philippines. Conflicts, often violent and protracted, over land usage and labor rights have pitted the suburban poor—tenant farmers, squatters, and laborers—against powerful local government officials, real estate moguls, manuf…
Macet Total
The streets o f to d ay 's Jak arta are n ot m eant for p ed estrians.The com m uters in their autom obiles and the pedestrians live in tw o sep arate w orld s___ W alking on the streets m eans th at one h as n o access to a ca r, no access to a p ro tective netw ork , and n o access to anybody anyw here.W h at such people ca rry w ith them is all they h ave.Jak artan s in th eir p assin g ca rs, on the o th er hand, incessan tly ru n arou nd the…
Capital, Coercion, and Crime
This book focuses on local bossism, a common political phenomenon where local power brokers achieve monopolistic control over an area's coercive and economic resources. Examples of bossism include Old Corruption in eighteenth-century England, urban political machines in the United States, caciques in Latin America, the Mafia in Southern Italy, and today's gangster politicians in such countries as India, Russia, and Thailand. For many years, the e…
A New Criminal Type in Jakarta
New Criminal Type in Jakarta: Counter-Revolution Today. James T. Siegel. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. xi +145 pp., notes
It Takes a Madrasah ’
(2001). ‘It Takes a Madrasah’?: Habermas Meets Bourdieu in Indonesia. South East Asia Research: Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 109-122
Response to Ileto
(2002). Response to Ileto: Or, Why I Am Not an Orientalist. Philippine Political Science Journal: Vol. 23, No. 46, pp. 129-138
Violence and the State in Suharto's Indonesia
These essays investigate institutionalized violence in New Order Indonesia and the ongoing legacy Suharto's dictatorship has conferred on the nation. The collection includes papers on East Timor, Aceh, Biak, the police, and the Indonesian military, among other topics. -- Cornell University Press
Oligarchic Patrimonialism, Bossism, Electoral Clientelism, and Contested Democracy in the Philippines
Riots, Pogroms, Jihad
The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia
In recent years, a steady stream of reportage and commentary has spotlighted a dangerous "Islamist threat" in Southeast Asia. This study, by contrast, offers a very different account. In descriptive terms, this study suggests that such an alarmist picture is highly overdrawn, and it traces instead a pattern of marked decline, demobilization, and disentanglement from state power in recent years for Islamist forces in Southeast Asia. This trend is …
On the ‘Anxiety of Incompleteness’
Over the course of the past decade, the study of religious violence has evolved into a thriving industry of sorts. More than a field of academic research, religious violence is now a topic in which powerful US government agencies, major international institutions and all manner of 'think tanks' and foundations have developed an interest. This paper suggests an alternative approach, both in terms of the specific context of Indonesia and more broad…
Political Islam and Violence in Indonesia * by Zachary Abuza
Journal Article Political Islam and Violence in IndonesiaBy Zachary Abuza. Get access Political Islam and Violence in Indonesia By Zachary Abuza (0London: Routledge, 2007), 165 pp. Price HB £65.00. ISBN 0–415–39401–5. John Sidel John Sidel London School of Economics Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 18, Issue 3, September 2007, Pages 449–452, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etm…
Islamic Narrative and Authority in Southeast Asia
In the academic realm of Southeast Asian Studies in its Cold War-era infancy, Islam was mere putty in the hands of anthropologists, historians, and political scientists keen to construct coherent and compelling understandings of the distinctiveness of ‘their’ region. Most notable in this regard were the early writings of Clifford Geertz, who assimilated Islam within what he called ‘the religion of Java’ and the broader ‘cultural system’ of Indic …
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy Revisited
Barrington Moore, Jr., argued that a vigorous and independent bourgeoisie is a necessary, if insufficient, condition for democracy. This article addresses this thesis through a comparative analysis of class formation in Southeast Asia. Colonial era state policies towards immigrant Chinese merchant minorities shaped the diverging capacities and inclinations of capitalist classes in the region to assert themselves in political life and to assume co…
The Islamist Threat in South East Asia
Professor John Sidel argues that coverage of terrorist events in South East Asia focuses on description, rather than explanation, events rather than causes. He suggests that Islamist forces in South East Asia are in retreat: terrorist violence reflects frustration at a reduction in political influence, not a rising tide of Islamisation. In a review of the situation in four individual countries, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Southern Th…
Response to Marc Howard Ross's review of Riots, Pogroms, Jihad
The argument that religious identities are haunted by anxieties is firmly grounded in anthropology, psychology, and social theory. The evidence for such anxieties in Indonesia comes from close reading of Islamic publications in Indonesia and of ethnographic accounts of localities that subsequently experienced episodes of religious violence. There is abundant descriptive evidence of these anxieties in ethnographic accounts and discourse analysis, …
Muslims and Matriarchs
Jeffrey Hadler’s new book, Muslims and Matriarchs: Cultural Resilience in Indonesia Through Jihad and Colonialism is noteworthy and commendable on at least several counts. It is beautifully written, with elegant turns of phrase and well chosen epigraphs, anecdotes, and empirical evidence in support of arguments made clearly, coherently, and, for the most part, convincingly. Muslims and Matriarchs also shows ample evidence of Hadler’s impressive e…
The Fate of Nationalism in the New States
In two landmark essays published in 1973, the eminent anthropologist Clifford Geertz offered an early assessment of what he termed 'The Fate of Nationalism in the New States,' referring to the newly independent nation-states of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ranging with characteristic ease and flair across Burma, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Nigeria, Geertz argued that an 'Integrative Revolution' was under way, but one c…
Nationalism In Post-Independence Southeast Asia
This chapter covers the variegated trajectories of post-independence nationalism in Southeast Asia. In contrast with conventional accounts stressing the management of ethnic diversity, the chapter argues that the greatest challenges and conflicts confronting the new nation-states of the region stemmed from the pressures of post-colonial reintegration into the world capitalist economy and the Cold War-era geopolitical order. Through a set of paire…
Political science (37 works) · Asian Studies and History (27 works) · Law (25 works) · Politics (25 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Law (20 works) · History (17 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Economics (12 works) · Geography (11 works)