2024 – Yamini Narayanan,聽聽(Stanford University Press 2023)聽
The 2024 MCR Prize Committee included Professor Vera Mackie (University of Wollongong), Associate Professor Patrick Jory (University of Queensland) and Professor Taylor Sherman (UNSW).
The Committee provided the following citation of the winning book:
鈥�Mother Cow, Mother India takes the form of a multi-sited, multi-species ethnography of the dairy industry in India, conducted in multi-caste, multi-racial and multi-religious communities. It engages with the latest theoretical perspectives from the field of Animal Studies and applies it to a new field of inquiry: the dairy industry in India. It examines human-animal hierarchies and relations 鈥� a political spectrum of human-bovine relations. The book鈥檚 central claim is that the cow is simultaneously commodified for dairy production and weaponised in the interests of Hindu nationalism. This work makes original contributions to the fields of South 黑料社区 and Animal Studies.鈥�
2022 – Associate Professor Patrick Jory from the University of Queensland for the book A History of Manners and Civility in Thailand, Cambridge University Press, 2021.
ASAA President Professor Katharine McGregor would like to thank the three judges for their generosity in serving on the prize selection committee: Associate Professor David Hundt (Deakin), Professor Kathy Robinson (ANU) and Dr Arjun (Murdoch University).
The judges provided the following citation for the winning book.
A history of manners and civility in Thailand is the product of deep and wide research. Dr Patrick Jory鈥檚 extensive training and knowledge as an historian of Southeast Asia are well evidenced in this fascinating retelling of Thailand鈥檚 modernisation. His ease and familiarity with Thai-language sources, including the government鈥檚 official manuals on 鈥榤anners鈥�, has enabled him to bring to life these sources in a compelling account of how state elites engineered Thailand鈥檚 social transformation since the late 19th century. The author makes judicious choices about his analytical approach, deftly drawing on anthropological and sociological insights to explain the role that manners have played in Thailand鈥檚 鈥榗ivilising鈥� process.
Dr Jory sees manners as a crucial element of what Bourdieu refers to as habitus, or the embodiment of social rank and position in everyday life. In this view, habitus is a force that governs social behaviour. If the author uses Bourdieu to gain one form of purchase on the notion of manners, he gives us a second one via Elias鈥� concept of the 鈥榗ivilising process鈥�, or the suggestion that social graces and hierarchies evolve in accordance with certain identifiable patterns over time. With these insights as his guide, Dr Jory contextualises Thailand鈥檚 development of a specific culture of manners beginning in the late 19th century. In his retelling, Thai elites鈥� inculcation of a local form of habitus was a conscious attempt to present Siam as a well-mannered, cultured society that satisfied the 鈥榮tandard of civilisation鈥� that had been unilaterally imposed by the Western powers. Successive regimes, he illustrates, have similarly harnessed the social power of manners to present a positive, refined image of Thailand to the outside world while using the notion of manners to reinforce their domestic political authority.
The book鈥檚 bottom-up, inside-out account of Thailand鈥檚 modernisation situates the locus of change firmly inside the country itself, while placing due weight on the international context. As such, readers might readily imagine comparable processes playing out in other countries. Indeed, Dr Jory鈥檚 fresh approach shows that the social history of the modern subject in the Global South is not a mere story of a 鈥榩rovincialised Europe鈥�, but part of a recognisably universal socio-cultural movement of manners and habits. As befits a book written by an experienced scholar, Dr Jory鈥檚 A history of manners and civility in Thailand has great inter-disciplinary and cross-national appeal. It deserves to be read widely.
2020 – Susie Protschky, Photographic Subjects: Monarchy and Visual Culture in Colonial Indonesia (Manchester University Press, 2019)