Dr. Diana Kim, Assistant Professor in the Asian Studies Program, is the co-winner of the Giovanni Sartori Book Award from the American Political Science Association (APSA) for Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition across Southeast Asia (Princeton University Press, 2020). The Giovanni Sartori Book Award honors Giovanni Sartori’s work on qualitative methods and concept formation, and especially his contribution to helping scholars think about problems of context as they refine concepts and apply them to new spatial and temporal settings.
Empires of Vice examines why colonial states in Southeast Asia began to institute bans on opium in the late nineteenth century, transforming a taxable vice into an illicit drug. In an interview with the Asian Studies Program, Dr. Kim spoke about the importance of opium in colonial governance and how the legacies of colonial rule shape the region’s current struggles.