Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, ed. An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia: The Illegal Trade in Arms, Drugs, People, Counterfeit Goods and Natural Resources in Mainland Southeast Asia. London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2013, x+214p.

Abstract

An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia: The Illegal Trade in Arms, Drugs, People, Counterfeit Goods and Natural Resources in Mainland Southeast Asia Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, ed. London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2013, x+214p.In the context of regional integration, Mainland Southeast Asia is subject to considerable economic activity and cross border trade. An intimately related question concerns extra-legal cross-border activities, such as the trade in drugs, wildlife, contraband, and people. The scholarly attention to these topics is rather large both within Southeast Asia and beyond. However, few attempts have been made in bringing together these different forms of both conceptually and empiri- cally. This is what An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia attempts to do. As editor Pierre- Arnaud Chouvy makes clear in the introduction, the aim is not merely to juxtapose these different forms of trade, but to provide a regional and systemic understanding of the variety of smuggling and trafficking activities (p. 3) as well as illuminating synergies between them.The book brings together several authors with considerable expertise within the region. The various chapters cover diverse topics such as the trafficking in drugs, arms, logging, wildlife, counterfeit goods, and humans. These different forms of trade are supplemented by several color- ful maps which visualize trafficking routes and patterns in Mainland Southeast Asia. One of the key claims the book is making is that there is considerable overlap between these trade routes and that they have significant historical trajectories. For example, as argued by David Capie, one cannot appreciate the arms trade in Mainland Southeast Asia without considering the post-conflict situation in several of the countries. Similarly, the contemporaneous drugs trade can only be understood in light of previous drug economies which were often blessed and even actively encouraged by West- ern powers.The book is rich in detail and one of its main strengths is its illumination of the various con- nections between these different economies. In Burma, a country which is subject to considerable inter-ethnic tension, semiautonomous armed groups depend on drug production; similarly drug reduction policies in Thailand are directly related to out-migration, prostitution, and human traf- ficking in Northern Thailand.All the chapters consider policy implications. It would have been interesting if the policy implications of regulation and prohibition had been analyzed more explicitly in a comparative frame- work. For example, Vanda Felbab-Brown's discussion of the certification of logging (p. 134) raises extremely interesting questions in terms of how this relates to its labor-equivalent (i.e. current certification of labor recruitment firms in the context of legalizing labor migration between Thailand and several of its neighbors).The conceptual framework, which is outlined in the introduction, relies on Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham's influential book Illicit Flows and Criminal Things (2005), where a key conceptual heuristic is the interrelation between the (il)legal and (il)licit. A key concern of Schendel and Abraham's work is to critically interrogate the inherent state-ism which is common- place in much analysis of trafficking and smuggling. For this reason one must avoid treating con- cepts, such as illegality, as self-evident. Although An Atlas of Trafficking is often similarly critical of such concepts, it commonly slips precisely into seeing like a state (Scott 1998) in the way it maps trafficking practices in Mainland Southeast Asia. For example in the context of human trafficking, it argues that it is necessary to examine trafficking routes and key border sites. But this is to echo the state's vision of trafficking which privileges state-borders over the work condi- tions of migrant laborers. The danger here is ironically (yet fortunately) illuminated by David Feingold in his chapter on human trafficking. …