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Malaysia. Houses in motion: The experience of place and the problem of belief in urban Malaysia By Richard Baxstrom Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press, 2008. Pp. ix, 283. Notes, Bibliography, Index.

forces shaped intellectual life in this time and place. If the book has weaknesses, they stem from its strengths. Hansen ends her study in the 1930s, when Buddhist modernist ideas ‘would cease to function as a modernism in the sense of an opposing critique, ethos or movement but increasingly as the dominant religious discourse’ (p. 181). Buddhism’s place in Khmer nationalism is explicitly not Hansen’s research interest, but the book does end a bit abruptly, and some general reflections on the relationship between Khmer Buddhism and post-colonial Cambodia would have been welcome. Finally, the subtlety of Hansen’s picture of the intersections between Khmer Buddhism and the global trends and forces collectively referred to as ‘modernity’ makes her regular reference to theorists of this phenomenon who focus on the European context (notably David Harvey) a little puzzling. The theoretical parameters that this helps her to establish are diffuse, and they do not contribute much to the nuanced theoretical position that she ultimately constructs through her own case study. If anything, Hansen’s work is proof that studies of global modernity need not assume as a starting point theoretical literature grounded in European case studies.