The German political theorist Carl Schmitt believed that political concepts and theories of the modern state are based upon secularised theological concepts. The recent popularity of Schmitt's work in relation to notions such as sovereignty and law, or (post-) Foucauldian studies of governmentality mirror ongoing debates on power and order in the social sciences and humanities. In Social Anthropology and Buddhist Studies, substantial work has been devoted to the study of Theravada Buddhism's link to the wider socio-political field in which power is enacted and performed. The only seemingly simple fact that ‘all religions also have a political dimension’, as editor Ian Harris (p. 1) puts it in the introduction, and the extensive body of literature on the subject cannot conceal that we actually still understand little of the complex interplay of Buddhism and the Southeast Asian political orders within which it operates.

Harris' introduction to the book provides a very brief overview of the topics that have been addressed in previous research, and outlines some of the issues dealt with in the book, such as Buddhist education, anti-colonialism, Theravada concepts of security and protection, law and the evolution of Theravada political theory. Unfortunately, the central notions of the book – power and political order – are only marginally addressed, and a somewhat more substantial introduction could have helped to give the interdisciplinary approach of the book more coherence. Nevertheless, many of the excellent chapters make up for this and reveal the complex development of heterogeneous Buddhist political theories and practices.

Two contributions deal with the role of Buddhist education. Ven. Khammai Dhammasami explores through a comparative (but rather descriptive) study of the Burmese and Thai monastic education system the challenges faced by the Sangha today. In a more reflective and interpretative account, Juliane Schober looks at Buddhist education and Burmese knowledge systems under colonialism. Schober manages very well to draw together theories of modernity, the impact of colonialism on the monastic educational system and the transformations in that domain in the postcolonial period. By pointing out that the link between these fields is not constituted by ‘a continuous narrative that distinguishes between modernity and tradition, secularism and religion, rationalism and Buddhist cosmology’ (p. 67), she splendidly sums up what I see as one of the major outcomes of this book: an analysis of the heterogeneous effects and hybridisations that have arisen through the interaction of Theravada Buddhism and the political on multiple levels through history. The latter is also demonstrated by Peter Skilling's dense contribution on ideology, ritual and power in pre-modern Siam, which is something of a tour de force. Questioning the value of commonly used terms such as ‘Theravada’, ‘state religion’ or ‘syncretism’, he gives us an important perspective on the emic terms and categories used in (mainly Thai and Pali) historical documents and thereby reveals the ‘hybridism’ (p. 186) of the Siamese religious state apparatus. Skilling also dissects the crucial concepts of Buddhist kings as bodhisattva, cakravartin or the Buddha. On the other hand, Andrew Huxley in ‘Rajadhamma confronts Leviathan’, wittily unravels the ‘listologies’ of Burmese political philosophy; for Westerners a rather unfamiliar way of organising political knowledge and concepts.

Two excellent contributions deal with Lao Buddhism, which has otherwise been largely absent from previous publications on the topic. Volker Grabowsky presents a detailed overview of Lao Buddhism's historical development in the precolonial period. By focusing on the career of one specific monk who was able to exert considerable political influence in the seventeenth century, he manages to demonstrate how the interaction of the political sphere (anacakara) and religious order (buddhacakra) can evolve into a rather specific constellation that blurs the boundaries between the two. Peter Koret focuses on Lao prophetic literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and brilliantly demonstrates how this specific genre of literature links the social and political realities of past, present and future and thereby comments on the ‘abnormal state of the present’ (p. 156) in times of crisis. In these two contributions, as in some of the others, it is very well demonstrated that conceptions of bounded entities like ‘Laos’ are rather recent and that the fluidity of Buddhist cultures and political systems has to be seen in its whole historical complexity.

That national entities are nevertheless effective constructions with a specific history of discursive production is exemplified in two contributions: John Marston's examination of the history of a Cambodian hospital for monks shows how the activities surrounding the construction of the building came to define an idea of a ‘modern’, national Cambodian Buddhism. Elisabeth Guthrie looks at the role of the earth deity Nang Thoranee in northeastern Thailand. Her role as a protector of the Thai nation in a time of communist radicalisation and the fierce anti-communism of the Sarit regime illustrates how the Cold War entered the Thai religious and political Buddhist imaginary. Peter Gyllap-Pap's text on the reconstruction of the Cambodian polity and Buddhism is the only chapter that has an explicit theoretical orientation. Unfortunately, the link between theories of political science, and the very interesting historical and ethnographic accounts presented, remains fairly flimsy. His account of King Sihanouk's political agenda of a ‘Buddhist Socialism’, which is also discussed in Marston's contribution, would have been worth expanding on.

By presenting situated and detailed historical, textual and ethnographic accounts the volume clearly manages to go beyond the previous works, which were often based on rather general concepts such as the ‘two wheels of the dhamma’. Most of the single chapters present new and highly interesting material and for scholars dealing with the region, and students with an interest in Buddhism and politics, this volume is essential reading. Readers who expect a more systematic study, however, will recognise that there is little effort to challenge, rethink and expand upon the classics of the genre of Tambiah, Bechert or Smith. Taking into account some theoretical approaches of power and order, and their relation to, for example, secularism, space and governmentality, could be of great benefit in that respect. I do not want to propose that we have to read Theravada Buddhism through the fashionable theory lenses of Foucault or Schmitt. But the way we grasp notions of power and order theoretically in combination with emic understandings, can certainly illuminate some aspects of Theravada Buddhism's political theory and practice that have yet to be discovered.