Lynette J. Chua. The Politics of Rights and Southeast Asia. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
This book introduces the politics of rights as a socio-legal framework for understanding how rights are mobilized, contested, and reshaped in the culturally and politically complex region of Southeast Asia. Moving beyond abstract legal norms, it treats rights as social practices, whose meanings are forged through grassroots engagement, legal struggles, and political contestation. Focusing on the structural conditions, strategies, and consequences of rights mobilization, the book examines how individuals and communities navigate authoritarian constraints and uneven legal terrains.
For attorneys working in or studying backsliding democracies, this work offers critical insight into the localized dynamics of legal advocacy. It reframes rights not as fixed entitlements but as tools of negotiation and resistance within shifting political landscapes. Lawyers are shown to be key actors—either as enablers of state repression or as allies in community-driven legal mobilization. By grounding theory in Southeast Asian realities, the book calls for a more nuanced understanding of lawyering under authoritarian and postcolonial conditions.