Duncan McCargo

Duncan McCargo is the Professor of Political Science at the University of Leeds.His work deals mainly with the nature of power: how entrenched elites seek to retain it, and how challengers seek to undermine their legitimacy. He is best known for his agenda-setting arguments about contemporary Thailand and Asia-related topics. He holds three degrees from the University of London: a First in English (Royal Holloway 1986); then an MA in Area Studies (Southeast Asia) (1990), and a PhD in Politics (1993) (the later two from the School of Oriental and African Studies). He has also taught at Queen's University Belfast, and at Kobe Gakuin University, Japan. In 2006-07, he was a visiting senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, while he served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Universiti Utara Malaysia in September 2011. McCargo is a Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, an Associate Fellow of the New-York-based Asia Society, and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House in London.

Writings on Thailand

McCargo's PhD thesis, "The political leadership of Major-General Chamlong Srimuang" was published in a revised form as a 1997 book. Since then McCargo has published several other books on Thailand. These include: Politics and the Press in Thailand (2000), a fieldwork-based study for which he spent a year embedded in the editorial rooms of several leading Thai language newspapers; Reforming Thai Politics (2002) an edited volume which has become the standard work on the political reform process of the 1990s, containing chapters by a range of leading Thai and foreign scholars and activists; and The Thaksinization of Thailand, a ground-breaking 2005 analysis of the politics surrounding controversial former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, co-authored with the revisionist political economist Ukrist Pathamanand.

Apart from his ten books – all of which have appeared in paperback – McCargo has published a large number of articles in journals including Critical Asian Studies, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Democracy and New Left Review. His writings regarding the "network monarchy", a term he coined to describe King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his proxies, particularly former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanond, have been especially influential among Thai academics. This was the only journal article selected by Foreign Affairs for their 7-item essential reading list on Thai politics.

Other articles deal critically with issues such as constitutionalism, the politics surrounding Buddhism, and the role of the military; he was extremely critical of the 2006 military coup in Thailand.[1] McCargo has consistently challenged mainstream assumptions in Thai studies and beyond, questioning the value of narrowly discipline-based perspectives in favour of more eclectic and empirically grounded approaches.[2]

Work on the southern Thai conflict

From 2005 to 2010, McCargo worked primarily on the violent conflict affecting Thailand’s southern border provinces, spending a year driving around the region and interviewing more than 270 informants. His Southern Thai project has resulted in three books to date: these include the edited collection Rethinking Thailand’s Southern Violence (2007), a revised version of a special issue of the journal Critical Asian Studies; and his research monograph Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (2008). The latter volume has been widely reviewed; Time magazine wrote:

No armchairs for this author: he researched the book by crisscrossing southern Thailand in a temperamental 1989 Mercedes, hastening back to the town of Pattani by nightfall to avoid militant booby traps. McCargo is the real McCoy.[3]

Pacific Affairs wrote of Tearing Apart the Land: “The nuances and complexities of this argument can be obtained only by a thorough reading of the book. It is by far the best analysis to date of the complexities of life in the insurgent area.” (Volume 82, No. 4 – Winter 2009/2010, pp. 740–41). In a full length review essay in London Review of Books, Joshua Kurlantzick declared: ‘Thailand, once known as one of the most stable democracies in Asia, is in political and economic crisis. . . . Southern Thailand now resembles a war zone. . . . McCargo gives a thorough explanation of why unrest began in southern Thailand, and why it has spread. . . .’(25 March 2010). Reviewing the book in the Journal of Asian Studies (May 1010) Robert W. Hefner wrote ‘McCargo has sifted through the details of this tragic conflict with extraordinary diligence and insight. The result is a small masterpiece of investigative rigor and balance.’

McCargo’s core argument is that the Southern conflict is a political problem; militants are tapping into local resentment concerning Bangkok’s refusal to grant the region any real say in the management of its affairs. Without some form of political compromise, the conflict may prove intractable – but such a solution remains perfectly possible.

Tearing Apart the Land won the Asia Society's inaugural Bernard Schwartz Book Prize for 2009, worth $20,000[4][5] Jury co-chair Professor Carol Gluck described it as a 'vivid on-the-ground account of the Thai insurgency showing how national politics, rather than minority religion, drives the violence that is too often ascribed either to ethnicity or Islam. This is a lesson that applies not only to Southeast Asia but to many parts of the world.[6] McCargo published a second single-authored book on the South, Mapping National Anxieties: Thailand's Southern Conflict in 2012.

Writings on media and politics

By no means all of McCargo’s work has been on Thailand. He has also conducted research in Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Japan. His 2003 book Media and Politics in Pacific Asia – a companion volume to his Thai press volume – develops a comparative argument, arguing against simply ‘modelling’ the political role of the media, in favour of an eclectic approach emphasising the different forms of agency deployed by media actors. This work has won him an audience in the field of communications studies, whose standard assumptions he regularly challenges. In 2012 he published a chapter in Comparing Media Systems: Beyond the Western World, a book edited by Dan Hallin and Paolo Mancini. The chapter contains his critical responses to their earlier comparative work on developing models for the relationship between media and politics.

Writings on religion and politics

Religion has been a central theme of McCargo's work, dating back to his doctoral research on Chamlong's links with the Santi Asoke Buddhist movement. His writings on Thai Buddhism - which he has suggested is an obstacle to, rather than an asset for, processes of democratization in the country - have generated controversy in Thailand, and have been extensively challenged in two recent books by the leading scholar-monk Prayudh Payutto. His work on the Southern Thai conflict dealt extensively with the role of Islam in Thailand's Malay-majority region.

Writings on other Asian countries

McCargo has also edited a book on Vietnam (2004). He is one of the very few Southeast Asia specialists to have published a well-known volume on a different part of Asia; his book Contemporary Japan (third edition forthcoming) is widely assigned even by Japanologists as an introductory student text.

Other activities

As one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary Thailand, McCargo is regularly appears as a media commentator, pundit and writer of op-ed pieces. He appears regularly in the broadcast media, especially on BBC radio and television, and his op-ed and commentary pieces have appeared in Time magazine, as well as in the Guardian Weekly, The Daily Telegraph,[7] The Economist,[8] The Guardian,[9][10][11] The Independent,[12] and a dozen other newspapers around the world. He has given lengthy interviews to The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New Mandala website. Twenty of his students have successfully earned PhDs under his supervision at Leeds.

McCargo is cited by his undergraduate alma mater, Royal Holloway, as one of their notable alumni in the field of education.[13]

In 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Tai Studies by Mahasarakham University in Thailand.[14] McCargo is one of only five recipients of this degree; other awardees have been historians Charnvit Kasetsiri and Thongchai Winichakul, anthropologist Charles Keyes, and archaeologist Srisak Vallibhotama.

McCargo has served twice as the Head of the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds. He was appointed an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2011, nominated by the Political Studies Association. Since October 2011, he has held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship to examine issues relating to justice and politics in Thailand.

On 12 April, McCargo made his stage debut at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. He co-starred in Titanic Tales: Stories of Courage and Cowardice, a specially commissioned production commemorating the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. He co-wrote Titanic Tales with cellist Stephanie Winters.

Publications

Authored books

Co-authored books

Edited books

Edited journal issues

Selected journal articles

Review articles

References

  1. ↑ 3. ^ See McCargo’s on-line Foreign Affairs essay on the coup at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61939/duncan-mccargo/toxic-thaksin, and also a summary of a long interview on the same theme at
  2. ↑ http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/2008/08/07/interview-with-professor-duncan-mccargo/
  3. ↑ Marshall, Andrew (2009-04-27). "Books: Anatomy of a Forgotten Conflict". TIME. Retrieved 2010-09-27.
  4. ↑ ^ University of Leeds Staff Profile - Duncan McCargo
  5. ↑ ^ Asia Society Announces Winner of 2009 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award
  6. ↑ Asia Society Announces Winner of 2009 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award [3]
  7. ↑ Daily Telegraph 19 May 2010 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/7738887/Bangkoks-savage-conflict-may-be-a-mere-dress-rehearsal.html
  8. ↑ ‘Enemies of the people’, The Economist, 30 July 2010 http://www.economist.com/node/16703377?story_id=16703377
  9. ↑ The Guardian, 19 May 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/19/thailand-redshirt-protests-military-crackdown
  10. ↑ The Guardian 18 May 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/17/analysis-thai-king-redshirt-protest
  11. ↑ ‘Thaksin’s long shadow’, The Guardian, 3 September 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/03/thailand
  12. ↑ The Independent, 15 May 2010 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/duncan-mccargo-thailand-is-deeply-fractured-and-anarchy-has-come-closer-1973961.html
  13. ↑ http://www.rhul.ac.uk/alumni/ouralumni/notablealumni.aspx
  14. ↑ http://www.web.msu.ac.th/commencement/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=81&Itemid=124

External links