Twisted Civility: Comparing Courtesy, Coercion and Shaming in Southeast Asian Cities and Beyond

Abstract The literature on civility navigates the gravitational pulls of binary camps: sceptics tend to emphasize how it operates as an instrument power; optimists its emancipatory potentials. While some scholarship has attempted reconcile these perspectives by showing can be both negative and positive, such theorization tends describe this relation in terms ambivalence. approaches rightly indicate that normative judgments about are largely a matter perspective, concept twisted developed here focuses ways which actors become trapped dynamic shifts force embedded within civility. Comparisons across seemingly incommensurate examples suggest multidirectional dynamics not culturally specific but rather more generalizable. Building our theoretical conception from comparative approach based research Kuching Saigon, then using consider United States Denmark, article also reverses direction theorizing typically employed Using postcolonial Southeast Asia source theory than afterthought, method uses anthropological comparison generate problematize assumptions universalize Euro-American trajectories