The JCA Prize was introduced in 2007 to recognise the best paper published in the previous year’s issues, judged by a panel drawn from the Editorial Board.
The criteria for selection include consideration of the scope and aims of the Journal, with the panel judging the ways in which each article provides an alternative perspective on mainstream views on contemporary Asian issues and/or contributes to the development of theory, especially on the role of the state, class analysis, power and globalisation.
The articles acknowledged and awarded the JCA Prize have been:
2023
Best paper: Adam D. Dixon (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, The Netherlands) for the article “The Strategic Logics of State Investment Funds in Asia: Beyond Financialisation,” which appeared in Vol. 52, No. 1.
Runner-up: Robert Pauls (Department of International Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China) for the article “Capitalist Accumulation, Contradictions and Crisis in China, 1995–2015,” which appeared in Vol. 52, No. 2.
2022
Best paper: Yoonkyung Lee (Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Canada) for the article “Neo-Liberal Methods of Labour Repression: Privatised Violence and Dispossessive Litigation in Korea,” which appeared in Vol. 51, No. 1.
Runner-up: Veerayooth Kanchoochat (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan), Trin Aiyara (Department of Political Science, Walailak University, Thailand) & Bank Ngamarunchot (Science Technology and Innovation Policy Institute, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand) for the article “Sick Tiger: Social Conflict, State–Business Relations and Exclusive Growth in Thailand,” which appeared in Vol. 51, No. 5.
2021
Best paper: Dong-Min Rieu (Department of Economics, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, South Korea) and Hyun Woong Park (Department of Economics, Denison University, Granville, USA) for the article “Unproductive Activities and the Rate of Surplus Value at the Industry Level in Korea, 1995–2015,” which appeared in Vol. 50, No. 2.
Runner-up: Jim Glassman (Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada) for the article “Lineages of the Authoritarian State in Thailand: Military Dictatorship, Lazy Capitalism and the Cold War Past as Post-Cold War Prologue,” which appeared in Vol. 50, No. 4.
2020
Best paper: Chuanfei Chin (Department of Philosophy, National University of Singapore) for the article “Precarious Work and its Complicit Network: Migrant Labour in Singapore,” which appeared in Vol. 49, No. 4.
Runner-up: David Bourchier (Asian Studies, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia) for the article “Two Decades of Ideological Contestation in Indonesia: From Democratic Cosmopolitanism to Religious Nationalism,” which appeared in Vol. 49, No. 5.
2019
Best paper: Muchtar Habibi (Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia) and Benny Hari Juliawan (Graduate School of Religious and Cultural Studies, Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia) for the article “Creating Surplus Labour: Neo-Liberal Transformations and the Development of Relative Surplus Population in Indonesia,” which appeared in Vol. 48, No. 4.
Runner-up: Iain Pirie (Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK) for the article “Korea and Taiwan: The Crisis of Investment-Led Growth and the End of the Developmental State,” which appeared in Vol. 48, No. 1.
2018
Best paper: Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir (LabSosio, Sociological Research Centre, University of Indonesia, Department of Sociology, State University of Jakarta, Indonesia and Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia) for the article “Islamic Militias and Capitalist Development in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia,” which appeared in Vol. 47, No. 4.
Runner-up: Serdal Bahçe and Ahmet Haşim Köse (Faculty of Political Sciences, Ankara University, Turkey) for the article “Social Classes and the Neo-Liberal Poverty Regime in Turkey, 2002–2011,” which appeared in Vol. 47, No. 4.
2017
Best paper: Jamie Doucette (School of Environment, Education, and Development, University of Manchester, UK) & Se-Woong Koo (MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University, New Haven, USA) for the paper “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” which appeared in Vol. 46, No. 2.
Runner-up: Eugénie Mérieau (Sciences Po, Paris, France) for the article “Thailand’s Deep State, Royal Power and the Constitutional Court (1997–2015),” which appeared in Vol. 46, No. 3.
2016
Best paper (joint winner): Patrick V. Oabel (Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada) for the paper “Last of the Labour Aristocrats: Restructuring of the Philippine Sugar Industry and the Exportist Labour Market,” which appeared in Vol. 45, No. 2.
Best paper (joint winner): Yoonkyung Lee (Department of Sociology, SUNY Binghamton, USA), for the paper “Sky Protest: New Forms of Labour Resistance in Neo-Liberal Korea,” which appeared in Vol. 45, No. 3.
2015
Best paper: Nicolas Grinberg (Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK), for the paper, “From Miracle to Crisis and Back: The Political Economy of South Korean Long-Term Development,” which appeared in Vol. 44, No. 4.
Runner-up: Shengjun Zhu & John Pickles (Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA), for the paper, “Bring In, Go Up, Go West, Go Out: Upgrading, Regionalisation and Delocalisation in China’s Apparel Production Networks,” which appeared in Vol. 44, No. 1.
2014
Best paper: Hae Yung Song (Centre of Korean Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), for the paper, “Democracy against Labour: The Dialectic of Democratisation and De-democratisation in Korea,” which appeared in Vol. 43, No. 2.
Runner-up: Fraser Sugden (International Water Management Institute, Kathmandu, Nepal), for the paper, “Pre-capitalist Reproduction on the Nepal Tarai: Semi-feudal Agriculture in an Era of Globalisation,” which appeared in Vol. 43, No. 3.
2013
Best paper: Judith Whitehead (Department of Anthropology, University of Lethbridge, Canada), for her paper, “John Locke, Accumulation by Dispossession and the Governance of Colonial India,” which appeared in Vol. 42, No. 1.
Runner-up: Toby Carroll (Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore), for his paper, “Working On, Through and Around the State: The Deep Marketisation of Development in the Asia-Pacific,” which appeared in Vol. 42, No. 3.
2012
Best paper: Saskia Eleonora Wieringa (Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands), for her paper, “Sexual Slander and the 1965/66 Mass Killings in Indonesia: Political and Methodological Considerations,” which appeared in Vol. 41, No. 4.
Runner-up: Ben Reid (School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Australia), for his paper, “Securitising Participation in the Philippines: KALAHI and Community-driven Development,” which appeared in Vol. 41, No. 1.
2011
Best paper: Caroline E. Arnold (Department of Political Science, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, USA) for her paper “Where the Low Road and the High Road Meet: Flexible Employment in Global Value Chains,” which appeared in Vol. 40, No. 4.
Runner-up: Kwang-Yeong Shin (Department of Sociology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea), for his paper “Globalisation and the Working Class in South Korea: Contestation, Fragmentation and Renewal,” which appeared in Vol. 40, No. 2.
2010
Best paper: Dae-oup Chang (Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK), for his paper, “Informalising Labour in Asia’s Global Factory” which appeared in Vol. 39, No. 2.
Runner-up: Wonik Kim (Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA), for his paper, “Rethinking Colonialism and the Origins of the Developmental State in East Asia,” which appeared in Vol. 39, No. 3.
2009
Best paper: Ray Kiely (Department of Politics, Queen Mary University of London, UK), for his paper, “ ‘Poverty’s Fall’/China’s Rise: Global Convergence or New Forms of Uneven Development?” which appeared in Vol. 38, No. 3.
Runner-up: Porphant Ouyyanont (School of Economics, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Thailand), for his paper, “The Crown Property Bureau In Thailand And The Crisis Of 1997,” which appeared in Vol. 38, No. 1.
2008
Best paper: Martin Gainsborough (Department of Politics, University of Bristol, UK), for his paper, “Globalisation and the State Revisited: A View from Provincial Vietnam,” which appeared in Vol. 37, No. 1.
Runner-up: Catherine C.H. Chiu (Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong), for her paper, “Workplace Practices in Hong Kong-invested Garment Factories in Cambodia,” which appeared in Vol. 37, No. 4.
2007
Best paper: Richard Westra (Division of International Area Studies, Pukyong National University, Busan, Korea), for his paper, “The Capitalist Stage of Consumerism and South Korean Development,” which appeared in Vol. 36, No. 1.
Runner-up: Terence Chong (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore), for his paper, “Embodying Society’s Best: Hegel and the Singapore State,” which appeared in Vol. 36, No. 3.
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