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In\xa0Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition across Southeast Asia\xa0(Princeton University Press, 2020)\xa0Diana Kim\xa0situates the regulation of vice at the heart of colonial state building. Through a layered comparison of opium prohibition in Burma, Malaya and Vietnam she shows how petty bureaucrats told stories to one another about opium that incrementally transformed into official problems, which those same bureaucrats and their successors had to solve. Prohibition did not come through grand decisions and decisive moments in old European metropoles and new international organizations so much as it did via accumulated observations and interpretations by thousands of \u201cbad ethnographers\u201d in the British and French imperial civil services.\nEmpires of Vice\xa0won the Giovanni Sartori Best Book Award, Qualitative Methods Section of the American Political Science Association, and got honourable mentions from the committees for the Charles Taylor Book Award, Interpretive Methodologies and Methods section of APSA, and the Allan Sharlin Memorial Award, Social Science History Association.\nThis is the fifth episode of\xa0New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science\xa0to featuring an exemplary monograph in interpretive political or social science. The others are Natasha Behl on\xa0Gendered Citizenship, Lisa Wedeen on\xa0Authoritarian Apprehensions, James Scott on\xa0Against the Grain, and Sarah Wiebe on\xa0Everyday Exposure. To download or stream episodes in the series, please subscribe to our host channel:\xa0New Books in Political Science.\nNick Cheesman\xa0is an associate professor in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University. He is a committee member of the\xa0Interpretive Methodologies and Methods\xa0group and co-convenes the\xa0Interpretation, Method, Critique\xa0network.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law