Forbidden Pleasures: Vice in Southeast Asia

From the practice of betel-chewing popular across the region for millenia to colonial opium regimes in Myanmar, the alcohol monopoly in French Indochina to beer ladies in present-day Singapore, the prostitution enclave of Bukit Senyum in Indonesia to Bangkok’s Soi Cowboy, vice has always been part of everyday life in Southeast Asia. In this module, students investigate the economic, political, social, geographical, and cultural significance of a variety of substances, such as drugs like tobacco, opium, alcohol and caffeine, and activities like (male and female) paid sex, gambling, sexual deviance and customs of ‘black magic’, through historical times right up till the contemporary present, and from the perspectives of colonial governments, present day nation-states, individuals and societies more generally. During the course, students use a range of texts, including scholarly articles, memoirs, newspaper articles, museum exhibits and archival materials to investigate the ways illicit substances and behaviors (‘forbidden pleasures’) are deeply imbricated in the quotidian and spectacular realities of myriad Southeast Asian societies.