Asian history Books

19591 products


  • Negative Exposures

    Duke University Press Negative Exposures

    Book SynopsisWhen nations decide to disown their troubled pasts, how does this strategic disavowal harden into social fact? In Negative Exposures, Margaret Hillenbrand investigates the erasure of key aspects of such momentous events as the Nanjing Massacre, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square protests from the Chinese historical consciousness, not due to amnesia or censorship but through the operations of public secrecy. Knowing what not to know, she argues, has many stakeholders, willing and otherwise, who keep quiet to protect themselves or their families out of shame, pragmatism, or the palliative effects of silence. Hillenbrand shows how secrecy works as a powerful structuring force in Chinese society, one hiding in plain sight, and identifies aesthetic artifacts that serve as modes of reckoning against this phenomenon. She analyses the proliferation of photo-forms—remediations of well-known photographs of troubling historical events rendered in such media as pTrade Review“Negative Exposures is a brave and revelatory book. With lyrical prose, nuanced argumentation, and a photosensitive eye, Margaret Hillenbrand limns the contours of China's contemporary cryptocracy, showing us how photographic images can work both to obscure and to bring the shadows of the historical past back into spectral presence.” -- Andrew F. Jones, Professor of Chinese, University of California, Berkeley“Negative Exposures is a boldly original book that analyzes cultural works based on photographs as objects that enable us to see and think through the unsayable in China. Margaret Hillenbrand contends that a culture of public secrecy, rather than censorship or historical amnesia, can explain how ordinary Chinese citizens fail or refuse to see and speak about difficult issues. This book is a powerful intervention that will be warmly welcomed and widely applauded.” -- Chris Berry, Kings College London“While sharply grounded in Chinese cultural history, Margaret Hillenbrand’s Negative Exposures is a valuable addition to current studies on visuality…. Negative Exposures is an insightful account of media objects’ centrality within anthropological, art-historical, literary, historical and sociological modes of analysis, binding often disparate methodologies together.” -- Shaowen Zhang * Critical Inquiry *“Margaret Hillenbrand’s incisive and beautifully composed monograph takes...‘photo-forms’—repurposed historical photographs—and their circulation as the point of departure for her fascinating excursus of public secrecy in contemporary China…. Her work could not have come at a more opportune time.” -- Patricia M. Thornton * China Quarterly *“Hillenbrand focuses on the medium of photography and its treatment of three key historical moments—the Nanjing Massacre, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Movement of 1989.... This is a beautifully conceived and nicely written book that is always interesting and thought-provoking.” -- Kirk A. Denton * MCLC Resource Center *“This timely book by Margaret Hillenbrand...examines the mechanism of ‘secrecy’ as a main structuring force in contemporary Chinese society.... A courageous and revelatory work like this, also beautifully written, surely blazes new trails and opens up many questions.” -- Mia Yinxing Liu * Chinese Literature *“One of the great contributions of the book is its intricate navigation across different disciplines and fields.... Filled with self-reflexive arguments, sophisticated analyses, and elegant prose, this engaging study is destined to be an important work.” -- Kun Qian * Journal of Asian Studies *“Margaret Hillenbrand’s Negative Exposures is a theoretically rich and provocative study that offers a new paradigm for thinking about Chinese cultural production under repressive governance.” -- Belinda Kong * The China Journal *“How could I write a review that could possibly do justice to this eloquently written monograph?... Negative Exposures is thought-provoking reading for scholars and research students interested in culture and history, in creativity and politics, and in control and resistance, both in China and beyond.” -- Yiu Fai Chow * China Review International *Table of ContentsSeries Editor's Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Preface xiii Introduction. Staking Out Secrecy 1 1. Don't Look Now 45 2. Keeping It in the Family 89 3. Cracking the Ice 131 4. Ducking the Firewall 168 Conclusion. Out of the Darkroom 209 Notes 225 References 245 Index 277

    £98.60

  • Ethnography 9

    Duke University Press Ethnography 9

    Book SynopsisIn this experimental ethnography, Alan Klima examines moneylending, gambling, funeral casinos, and the consultations of spirits and mediums to predict winning lottery numbers to illustrate the relationship between contemporary Thai spiritual and financial practices and global capitalism's abstraction of monetary value.Trade Review“Alan Klima's ethnographic writing releases a middle zone, an in-between that haunts the kind of thought accreted by Euro-enlightenment. And it is beautifully done, unfolding, cascading, easing a shift in realism that starts by troubling a conventionally recognized real, material world and ends up dominated by the voice of a double, a possession. Ethnography #9 is an amazing and wonderful book by a masterful and compelling writer.” -- Kathleen Stewart, coauthor of * The Hundreds *“In Ethnography #9, ghosts dance with social theorists, and the spirit-possessed author juggles global financial tips along with winning lottery numbers. In Thailand after the financial crash, loan godmothers, gambling, and unhinging ghosts share the stage with World Bank prescriptions and market-hogging mega-marts. Alan Klima and his spirit familiar stage a wild experiment in telling the real by moving out of common sense.” -- Anna Tsing, coeditor of * Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene *“Ethnography #9 is not about Islam, but the book, the ethnography, the ethnographer, the possessed writer, and the haunted reader are all confronted by Islam in the very first instance, by its potential, its catastrophe, its capacities, and its ghosts.... Klima’s approach is meditative, soulful.” -- Tanzeen Rashed Doha * Milestones *“Klima’s brilliant, fantastically moving and seriously haunting book...[is] not just a book about numbers.... His is, in sum, the story of an uncertain present.” -- Gil Anidjar * Milestones *“Ethnography #9 is, among so many things, a book about media, mediums, and mediation.... But where media scholars might talk about television as a window on the world, or about how media disrupts geography by binding near and far, Klima guides our attention to something else...a gothic ethnography of the screen.” -- Erica Robles-Anderson * Milestones *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii 1. The Ghost Manifesto 1 2. World Gothic 46 3. Betting on the Real 65 4. Prove It 88 5. Regendered Debt 95 6. Men and Our Money 101 7. The Godfathers 114 8. It Has All Happened Before 124 9. The Return of the Dead 132 10. Reversing the Mount 140 11. Deterritory 145 12. Everywhere and Nowhere 149 13. The End of the World 157 14. Fossil 165 Notes 171 Bibliography 177 Index 181

    £22.79

  • Invisibility by Design

    Duke University Press Invisibility by Design

    Book SynopsisGabriella Lukács traces how young Japanese women's unpaid labor as bloggers, net idols, “girly” photographers, online traders, and cell phone novelists was central to the development of Japan's digital economy in the 1990s and 2000s.Trade Review“Addressing crucial issues for our time, Gabriella Lukács brings an ethnographic perspective to young Japanese women who aspire to lucrative careers in day trading and beyond. Through a writing style filled with warmth and empathy, she portrays how these women often face disappointment in their entrepreneurial endeavors, and analyzes how these women's desires for better careers can sometimes be self-defeating. A deeply insightful and thought-provoking book.” -- Ian Condry, author of * The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story *“Stunningly powerful, Invisibility by Design tracks the movement of young Japanese women into the digital economy where, ‘seduced’ into imagining its possibilities for meaningful work, most found instead that they labored too hard for little pay-off or gendered advancement. Indicting the capitalism that drove digital economy's rapid expansion in 2000s Japan by exploiting and invisibilizing women's affective labor, Gabriella Lukács has given us a book that is at once theoretically profound and ethnographically dense, dancing through the stories of women bloggers, net idols, 'girly' photographers, amateur traders, and cell phone novelists. A rich tour de force!” -- Anne Allison, author of * Precarious Japan *“This book is valuable for what it tells us about how some women, by moving into digital careers, have tried to resist the discrimination and restrictions of Japan’s gendered labor market.... It is also a welcome contribution to our understanding of how capitalism operates in the digital age.” -- Kaye Broadbent * Journal of Japanese Studies *“Gabriella Lukács’s stunning new book, Invisibility by Design, examines online spaces that promise opportunities for women in particular.... Although the dynamics described within it focus on Japan, this book will be of interest to scholars working in many fields, including gender studies, labor, and communications.” -- Allison Alexy * Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Labor and Gender in Japan's Digital Economy 1 1. Disidentifications: Women, Photography, and Everyday Patriarchy 30 2. The Labor of Cute: Net Idols in the Digital Economy 57 3. Career Porn: Blogging and the Good Life 81 4. Working without Sweating: Amateur Traders and the Financialization of Daily Life 106 5. Dreamwork: Cell Phone Novelists, Affective Labor, and Precarity Politics 132 Epilogue. Digital Labor, Labor Precarity, and Basic Income 155 Notes 167 References 207 Index 225

    £22.49

  • Urban Horror

    Duke University Press Urban Horror

    Book SynopsisIn Urban Horror Erin Y. Huang theorizes the economic, cultural, and political conditions of neoliberal post-socialist China. Drawing on Marxist phenomenology, geography, and aesthetics from Engels and Merleau-Ponty to Lefebvre and Rancière, Huang traces the emergence and mediation of what she calls urban horror—a sociopolitical public affect that exceeds comprehension and provides the grounds for possible future revolutionary dissent. She shows how documentaries, blockbuster feature films, and video art from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan made between the 1990s and the present rehearse and communicate urban horror. In these films urban horror circulates through myriad urban spaces characterized by the creation of speculative crises, shifting temporalities, and dystopic environments inhospitable to the human body. The cinematic image and the aesthetics of urban horror in neoliberal post-socialist China lay the groundwork for the future to such an extent, Huang contendsTrade Review“What is ‘horror’ in the contemporary world? With reference to numerous interesting Chinese-language films, Erin Y. Huang argues that horror is a morphing assemblage of sociohistorical forces, one that creates a disjuncture between a perceived external reality and an internal frame of comprehension. An admirably timely statement on the often hypermedial—and horrific—performativity of urban public sentiments, in post-socialist China as in EuroAmerica and beyond.” -- Rey Chow, author of * Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility *“In this visionary book Erin Y. Huang lays out a new epistemology of the political, cultural, and affective present while gesturing toward desirable futures. This book will galvanize the study of Chinese cinema and interdisciplinary studies of the urban; it will be of unique interest to all those across the humanities who are striving to decipher the logics of the global, neoliberal present. Like no other book, Urban Horror makes the affective, political, and material contours of the contemporary Asian city available to social theory. A vitally innovative work.” -- Arnika Fuhrmann, author of * Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema *“What makes Urban Horror particularly valuable is Huang’s attention to historical and cultural specificity in her application of Western theories. For example, in her discussion of Li Shaohong’s films, she avoids taking feminism as a transhistorical and universal category. Rather, she excavates the nuanced and complex meanings of Chinese femininity to theorize postsocialist feminism within the context of modern and socialist Chinese history…. Huang’s theoretical approach is an excellent model for contextualizing Western theories and philosophies for Asian studies.” -- Li Zeng * Film Quarterly *“Huang’s close reading of films and theoretical texts is lucid and persuasive.... Urban Horror is suitable not only for readers who are interested in understanding the post-socialist condition in China but also those who are generally drawn to the long-standing academic tradition of theorizing the relationship between aesthetics and politics....” -- Ziwei Chen * Asiascape *“Few books can be timelier than Erin Y. Huang’s erudite and insightful Urban Horror.... Huang could not have foreseen the emergence of COVID-19 when writing, but it has certainly amplified the resonance of her work.” -- Chris Berry * The China Journal *“Huang’s study is impressive in her sophisticated theoretical analysis and innovative textual readings. I highly recommend [Urban Horror] to scholars and students in the fields of contemporary Chinese or Sinophone studies, film and media studies, urban studies, as well as studies of affect and sensuality.” -- Yu Zhang * Journal of Asian Studies *“Urban Horror is a sprawling, complex, and challenging book, full of acute theoretical insights and detailed close readings of narrative and documentary films. . . . [It] is a powerful and timely piece of speculative theory and film criticism, a pressing read for scholars of modern and contemporary China, film and media studies, and the study of postsocialist culture.” -- Hongwei Thorn Chen * MCLC Resource Center *“Urban Horror provides a fascinating read especially for those interested in bringing together economic and cultural histories of the recent past. . . . Urban Horror is an indispensable read for any historian trying to get a grasp of the relation between popular culture and public sentiment in the neoliberal era.” -- Dennis Koelling * European Review of History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Urban Horror: Speculative Futures of Chinese Cinemas 1 1. Cartographies of Socialism and Post-Socialism: The Factory Gate and the Threshold of the Visible World 33 2. Intimate Dystopias: Post-Socialist Femininity and the Marxist-Feminist Interior 69 3. The Post- as Media Time: Documentary Experiments and the Rhetoric of Ruin Gazing 101 4. Post-Socialism in Hong Kong: Zone Urbanism and Marxist Phenomenology 146 5. The Ethics of Representing Precarity: Film in the Era of Global Complicity 184 Epilogue 218 Notes 223 Bibliography 245 Index 259

    £98.60

  • Musicophilia in Mumbai

    Duke University Press Musicophilia in Mumbai

    Book SynopsisTejaswini Niranjana traces the place of Hindustani classical music in Mumbai throughout the long twentieth century, showing how the widespread love of music throughout the city created a culture of collective listening and social subjects who embodied new forms of modernity.Trade Review“Tejaswini Niranjana's beautifully written book gives us a glimpse into the ways in which Hindustani classical music enables distinct performances of modernity in a postcolonial context. She takes us on a fascinating journey across performative spaces while powerfully and subtly portraying the lives and struggles of musicians and showing how gender, caste, class, and religious identity refract their subjectivities. I greatly appreciate and am moved by the material she presents in this book.” -- Purnima Mankekar, author of * Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality *“In her highly accessible, enjoyable, and immensely informative book, Tejaswini Niranjana—an astute and sympathetic cultural theorist—weaves musical genealogies and musician biographies into rich descriptions of the lives, emotions, and lived spaces of musicians and their audiences. Her centering of enjoyment, pleasure, and love in the study of Hindustani music is refreshing. Beautifully written, Musicophilia in Mumbai will set the standard for new waves of scholarship on Hindustani music and India's other classical traditions.” -- Anna Morcom, author of * Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance: Cultures of Exclusion *"A fascinating journey across the city… Musicophilia in Mumbai will, undoubtedly, set the standard for more scholarship on Hindustani music as also India's other gharanas. Even if the study is deeply localized and empirically distinct, similar patterns can be traced elsewhere in South Asia. The book suggests that the relationship between cultural practice and the formation of the social subject can be expressed in many ways and many contexts—especially in the 'non-west.'" -- Bhaskar Parichha * KITAAB *"For the discerning consumer, the current proliferation of texts on and about Hindustani Classical Music is a munificence worth exploring. Tejaswini Niranjana's Musicophilia in Mumbai ought to occupy a prominent position within this largesse, thanks to its combination of excellent scholarship, accessible language, and sagacious approach." -- S.D. Chaudhuri * Telegraph India *"An important text for anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and historians seeking to understand modernity in urban India. Moreover, Niranjana's careful attention to the ways that actual people construe urban sociality, produce subjectivity, and construct modernity should recommend it to a wider audience interested in global cities." -- David Strohl * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"Musicophilia in Mumbai will likely be most interesting to scholars in the fields of South Asian studies, performance studies, and ethnomusicology. It will also be useful to those seeking to understand how the organization of urban space impacts social relations through musical performance.… Grounded in historical and ethnographic research, Niranjana's book is a multilayered resource connecting the past and present of this dynamic art form." -- Rehanna Kheshgi * Journal of Asian Studies *“The remembered and physical worlds of musical life in Bombay city over the long 20th century are well portrayed. . . . I recommend [Musicophilia in Mumbai] highly for those who love Indian music.” -- Andrew Alter * Asian Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. On Not Being Able to Learn Music 1 1. "Yaa Nagari Mein Lakh Darwaza": Musicophilia and the Lingua Musica in Mumbai 19 2. Mehfil (Performance): The Spaces of Music 46 3. Deewaana (The Mad One): The Lover of Music 86 4. Taleem: Pedagogy and the Performing Subject 128 5. Nearness as Distance, or Distance as Nearness 162 Afterword 181 Glossary 199 Notes 205 Selected Bibliography 227 Index 235

    £98.60

  • Beijing from Below

    Duke University Press Beijing from Below

    Book SynopsisHarriet Evans tells the history of the residents in Dashalar—now redeveloped and gentrified but once one of the Beijing's poorest neighborhoods—to show how their experiences complicate official state narratives of Chinese economic development and progress.Trade Review“Through a series of engaging and entirely unique ethnographic oral histories of the subaltern residents of a now all-but-destroyed Beijing neighborhood, Harriet Evans evokes a community, a fractured class, and a way of life that have now surely disappeared into the area's reconstructed shiny commercialism. Never central actors on any stage, and barely bit extras on the stage of Beijing's transformations, Evans's interlocutors are the kinds of people who disappear in any history. Her talent in rendering these left-behind urban denizens is astonishing. Beijing from Below makes a huge contribution. -- Rebecca E. Karl, author of * The Magic of Concepts: History and the Economic in Twentieth-Century China *“Harriet Evans makes visible a world that has been hiding in plain sight—the packed courtyards and dense social networks of one of Beijing's poorest neighborhoods. Drawing upon many years of conversation with residents and archival research, Evans provides a compelling account of everyday struggles and pleasures in a community that has been shaped, and neglected, by state policies. Beijing from Below raises profound questions about the reach of an ambitious revolution, even within its own capital city.” -- Gail Hershatter, author of * Women and China’s Revolutions *“[Beijing from Below] is a first-hand study which describes the lives of ordinary people at the grassroots, or more accurately at the urban roots, in the form of story-telling.... Only by reading the book can we appreciate the depth and detail of [Evans’] findings....” -- Michael Sheringham * Asian Affairs *“Harriet Evans’s Beijing from Below presents an exceptional insight into the precarious lives of what Evans calls the ‘subalterns of history’.... It is a valuable read for anyone interested in China’s urban transformation and its effects on urban populations, subalternity and precarity.” -- Laura Vermeeren * China Information *“A first-hand study which describes the lives of ordinary people at the grassroots, or more accurately at the urban roots, in the form of storytelling.... Only by reading the book can we appreciate the depth and detail of her findings.” -- Michael Sheringham * East Asia *“[Beijing from Below] is a must for anyone who has a warm heart for Beijing, or who is interested in how Chinese urban development affects the lives of the population.... Evans gives a face to the rickshaw drivers, sellers of tourist paraphernalia in Tian'anmen Square, the dishwashers in restaurants and other nameless people who populate Dahalar.” -- Judith van de Bovenkamp * China 2025 *“Beijing from Below utilizes thae anlytical rigor of ethnography to contextualize and theorize social experience without sacrificing the detailed and unique richness of each individual story.... The writing is compelling, and students of all levels (from undergraduate to graduate) would benefit from this ethnography.” -- Jenny Chio * China Review International *“[Beijing from Below] gives the reader the feeling of being fully immersed in the lives of the residents of Dashalar.... The book will be of great value to anyone interested in Chinese urbanization, memory studies, public history, civilizing processes, use of cultural heritage, politics of identities and agency of the urban poor." -- Florence Graezer Bideau * The China Quarterly *“Beijing from Below is an important work. . . . In a book rich in detail and analysis, Harriet Evans takes the reader into a respectful and considered examination of the lives of Dashalar’s residents and their struggles to survive.” -- Anna Hayes * Asian Studies Review *“Beijing From Below impresses for the capacity to offer the space of discourse to those who are losing their physical space, amidst a steadfast urban transformation. The way Evans acknowledges and brings their voices to the core is as poignant as it is rigorous, making Beijing from Below a fulfilling reading, and an indispensable work for future research in the field." -- Plácido González Martínez * Orientalistische Literaturzeitung *“By any standards, this is an extraordinarily rich work, and it is all the more valuable in illuminating a transformative period in Beijing’s (and China’s) history, foregrounding the stories of people and families whose voices are still relatively rarely heard.” -- Marjorie Dryburgh * Biography *

    £76.50

  • Underglobalization

    Duke University Press Underglobalization

    Book SynopsisFocusing on a wide range of media technologies and practices in Beijing, Joshua Neves examines the cultural politics of the fake and how frictions between legality and legitimacy propel dominant models of economic development and political life in contemporary China.Trade Review“Through a meticulous and multivalent study of the many discourses and practices around the fake, Joshua Neves provides us a kaleidoscopic and fascinating view of the sociality and media culture of contemporary Beijing, China, Asia, and the world. This truly interdisciplinary work draws resources from many fields and many cultures, and it demonstrates vividly how the logic of development densely infiltrates our mentality and ways of living.” -- Laikwan Pang, author of * Creativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offense *“Joshua Neves treats the transformations of Beijing's cityscape as an experienced physical reality, an imagined construct in popular culture and art, and representative of what is happening in China. By disclosing what is distinctive and elusive about China's seemingly triumphant developmental nation-building project, Neves makes a provocative intervention at the nexus of several interdisciplinary subfields, from urban media studies and Asian developmental studies to postsocialism studies and global subaltern studies.” -- Dilip P. Gaonkar, Professor in Rhetoric and Public Culture, Northwestern University"Neves has written a meticulously sourced analysis of the cultural transformation of societies, focusing on the appearance of fakes and forgeries in China. . . . Recommended. Graduate students and faculty researchers." -- S. C. Hart * Choice *"The experience of reading Joshua Neves's Underglobalization is a bit like watching an experimental film.… Bringing an innovative approach to media that focuses on forms, technologies, practices, and infrastructures, Neves has produced a captivating account that challenges the methodological complacencies of much scholarship at the intersection of China, media, and globalization." -- Fan Yang * Film Quarterly *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. After Legitimacy 1 1. Rendering the City: Between Ruins and Blueprints 33 2. Digital Urbanism: Piratical Citizenship and the Infrastructure of Dissensus 61 3. Bricks and Media: Cinema's Technologized Spatiality 94 4. Beijing en Abyme: Television and the Unhomely Social 120 5. Videation: Technological Intimacy and the Politics of Global Connection 150 6. People as Media Infrastructure: Illicit Culture and the Pornographics of Globalization 169 Notes 169 Bibliography 227 Index 245

    £98.60

  • Reenchanting Modernity

    Duke University Press Reenchanting Modernity

    Book SynopsisMayfair Yang examines the reemergence of religious life and ritual after decades of enforced secularized life in the coastal city of Wenzhou, showing how local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism influence economic development and the structure of civil society.Trade Review“Mayfair Yang's wonderful ethnography reveals an alternative ‘ritual economy’ under the dizzying churn of market relations in China. It is attuned to giving, reciprocity, and the materialization of a social and spiritual life. While committed to wealth-making, the people of Wenzhou are by the same token committed to the health of their communal lives.” -- Prasenjit Duara, Duke University“Mayfair Yang's compelling account of the re-enchantment of everyday life in Wenzhou, China, reveals lines of flight through which re-ritualization reworks capitalist accumulation to produce new communal relations. A must-read for anyone interested in alternative possibilities for China's future.” -- Kenneth Dean, Raffles Professor of Humanities, National University of Singapore"An engaging, diachronic portrayal of recent religious developments… I strongly recommend it to readers interested in these topics, and I would also recommend sections of it for certain graduate and advanced undergraduate classes on Buddhism." -- Douglas Gildow * H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews *"Re-enchanting Modernity clearly deserves recognition for its presentation of salient ethnographic data combined with innovated inquires, all of which calls our attention to the resilience of Chinese religious beliefs and practices while adapting to the challenges of the modern era. . . . Yang's findings should inspire future generations of scholars to undertake further ethnographic research on this vitally important topic." -- Paul R. Katz * Review of Religion and Chinese Society *"Re-enchanting Modernity is a terrific study of the relationship between religion, state, and civil society in post-Mao China. . . . A must-read." -- Jules Zhao Liu * China Review International *"Re-enchanting Modernity presents a very intriguing and in-depth ethnographic investigation of religion and ritual in modern China." -- Yujie Zhu * Journal of Anthropological Research *"Yang’s book is an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship examining post-Mao China’s religious resurgences and the broader conditions under which modernity brings about the (re)production of new and older forms of enchantment. I also find the book highly relevant and refreshing in providing insight into some of the complexities of rural China’s emerging religious civil society in ways that defy and push back against the current resurgence of Orientalism in the 'liberal' West with respect to 'illiberal' China." -- Micah F. Morton * Anthropos *"This book contains some of the most compelling analyses of Chinese society I have read, and it will continue to nourish future debates. As Yang powerfully suggests, pluralized discussions of civil society and the ritual economy may help bring alternative visions of society and economy into being." -- Jiazhi Fengjiang * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Part I. Introduction 1 1. From "Superstition" to "People's Customs": An Ethnographic Discovery of Key Questions in Wenzhou 1 2. The Wenzhou Model of Rural Development in China 32 Part II. Religious Diversity and Syncretism in Wenzhou 49 3. Popular Registry: Deities, Spirit Mediums, Ancestors, Ghosts, and Fengshui 51 4. Daoism: Ancient Gods, Boisterous Rituals, and Hearthside Priests 92 5. Buddhist Religiosity: The Wheel of Life, Death, and Rebirth 125 Part III. Religious Civil Society and Ritual Economy 159 6. Sprouts of Religious Civil Society: Temples, Localities, and Communities 161 7. The Rebirth of the Lineage: Creative Unfolding and Multiplicity of Forms 190 8. Of Mothers, Goddesses, and Bodhisattvas: Patriarchal Structures and Women's Religious Agency 224 9. Broadening and Pluralizing the Modern Category of "Civil Society": A Friendly Quarrel with Durkhelm 257 10. What's Missing in the Wenzhou Model? The "Ritual Economy" and "Wasting of Wealth" 279 Conclusion 315 Appendix A. Chronology of Chinese Dynasties 321 Appendix B. Notes on Currency, Weights, Measurements, and Chinese Romanization and Pronunciation 323 Appendix C. Religious Sites Visited in Wenzhou by Author, 1990–2016 325 Notes 331 Glossary 335 References 345 Index 365

    £112.20

  • Underglobalization

    Duke University Press Underglobalization

    Book SynopsisDespite China's recent emergence as a major global economic and geopolitical power, its association with counterfeit goods and intellectual property piracy has led many in the West to dismiss its urbanization and globalization as suspect or inauthentic. In Underglobalization Joshua Neves examines the cultural politics of the fake and how frictions between legality and legitimacy propel dominant models of economic development and political life in contemporary China. Focusing on a wide range of media technologies and practices in Beijing, Neves shows how piracy and fakes are manifestations of what he calls underglobalization-the ways social actors undermine and refuse to implement the specific procedures and protocols required by globalization at different scales. By tracking the rise of fake politics and transformations in political society, in China and globally, Neves demonstrates that they are alternate outcomes of globalizing processes rather than anathema to them.Trade Review“Through a meticulous and multivalent study of the many discourses and practices around the fake, Joshua Neves provides us a kaleidoscopic and fascinating view of the sociality and media culture of contemporary Beijing, China, Asia, and the world. This truly interdisciplinary work draws resources from many fields and many cultures, and it demonstrates vividly how the logic of development densely infiltrates our mentality and ways of living.” -- Laikwan Pang, author of * Creativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offense *“Joshua Neves treats the transformations of Beijing's cityscape as an experienced physical reality, an imagined construct in popular culture and art, and representative of what is happening in China. By disclosing what is distinctive and elusive about China's seemingly triumphant developmental nation-building project, Neves makes a provocative intervention at the nexus of several interdisciplinary subfields, from urban media studies and Asian developmental studies to postsocialism studies and global subaltern studies.” -- Dilip P. Gaonkar, Professor in Rhetoric and Public Culture, Northwestern University"Neves has written a meticulously sourced analysis of the cultural transformation of societies, focusing on the appearance of fakes and forgeries in China. . . . Recommended. Graduate students and faculty researchers." -- S. C. Hart * Choice *"The experience of reading Joshua Neves's Underglobalization is a bit like watching an experimental film.… Bringing an innovative approach to media that focuses on forms, technologies, practices, and infrastructures, Neves has produced a captivating account that challenges the methodological complacencies of much scholarship at the intersection of China, media, and globalization." -- Fan Yang * Film Quarterly *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. After Legitimacy 1 1. Rendering the City: Between Ruins and Blueprints 33 2. Digital Urbanism: Piratical Citizenship and the Infrastructure of Dissensus 61 3. Bricks and Media: Cinema's Technologized Spatiality 94 4. Beijing en Abyme: Television and the Unhomely Social 120 5. Videation: Technological Intimacy and the Politics of Global Connection 150 6. People as Media Infrastructure: Illicit Culture and the Pornographics of Globalization 169 Notes 169 Bibliography 227 Index 245

    £25.19

  • Urban Horror

    Duke University Press Urban Horror

    Book SynopsisIn Urban Horror Erin Y. Huang theorizes the economic, cultural, and political conditions of neoliberal post-socialist China. Drawing on Marxist phenomenology, geography, and aesthetics from Engels and Merleau-Ponty to Lefebvre and RanciÈre, Huang traces the emergence and mediation of what she calls urban horror-a sociopolitical public affect that exceeds comprehension and provides the grounds for possible future revolutionary dissent. She shows how documentaries, blockbuster feature films, and video art from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan made between the 1990s and the present rehearse and communicate urban horror. In these films urban horror circulates through myriad urban spaces characterized by the creation of speculative crises, shifting temporalities, and dystopic environments inhospitable to the human body. The cinematic image and the aesthetics of urban horror in neoliberal post-socialist China lay the groundwork for the future to such an extent, Huang contends, that the seeds of dissent at the heart of urban horror make it possible to imagine new forms of resistance.Trade Review“What is ‘horror’ in the contemporary world? With reference to numerous interesting Chinese-language films, Erin Y. Huang argues that horror is a morphing assemblage of sociohistorical forces, one that creates a disjuncture between a perceived external reality and an internal frame of comprehension. An admirably timely statement on the often hypermedial—and horrific—performativity of urban public sentiments, in post-socialist China as in EuroAmerica and beyond.” -- Rey Chow, author of * Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility *“In this visionary book Erin Y. Huang lays out a new epistemology of the political, cultural, and affective present while gesturing toward desirable futures. This book will galvanize the study of Chinese cinema and interdisciplinary studies of the urban; it will be of unique interest to all those across the humanities who are striving to decipher the logics of the global, neoliberal present. Like no other book, Urban Horror makes the affective, political, and material contours of the contemporary Asian city available to social theory. A vitally innovative work.” -- Arnika Fuhrmann, author of * Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema *“What makes Urban Horror particularly valuable is Huang’s attention to historical and cultural specificity in her application of Western theories. For example, in her discussion of Li Shaohong’s films, she avoids taking feminism as a transhistorical and universal category. Rather, she excavates the nuanced and complex meanings of Chinese femininity to theorize postsocialist feminism within the context of modern and socialist Chinese history…. Huang’s theoretical approach is an excellent model for contextualizing Western theories and philosophies for Asian studies.” -- Li Zeng * Film Quarterly *“Huang’s close reading of films and theoretical texts is lucid and persuasive.... Urban Horror is suitable not only for readers who are interested in understanding the post-socialist condition in China but also those who are generally drawn to the long-standing academic tradition of theorizing the relationship between aesthetics and politics....” -- Ziwei Chen * Asiascape *“Few books can be timelier than Erin Y. Huang’s erudite and insightful Urban Horror.... Huang could not have foreseen the emergence of COVID-19 when writing, but it has certainly amplified the resonance of her work.” -- Chris Berry * The China Journal *“Huang’s study is impressive in her sophisticated theoretical analysis and innovative textual readings. I highly recommend [Urban Horror] to scholars and students in the fields of contemporary Chinese or Sinophone studies, film and media studies, urban studies, as well as studies of affect and sensuality.” -- Yu Zhang * Journal of Asian Studies *“Urban Horror is a sprawling, complex, and challenging book, full of acute theoretical insights and detailed close readings of narrative and documentary films. . . . [It] is a powerful and timely piece of speculative theory and film criticism, a pressing read for scholars of modern and contemporary China, film and media studies, and the study of postsocialist culture.” -- Hongwei Thorn Chen * MCLC Resource Center *“Urban Horror provides a fascinating read especially for those interested in bringing together economic and cultural histories of the recent past. . . . Urban Horror is an indispensable read for any historian trying to get a grasp of the relation between popular culture and public sentiment in the neoliberal era.” -- Dennis Koelling * European Review of History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Urban Horror: Speculative Futures of Chinese Cinemas 1 1. Cartographies of Socialism and Post-Socialism: The Factory Gate and the Threshold of the Visible World 33 2. Intimate Dystopias: Post-Socialist Femininity and the Marxist-Feminist Interior 69 3. The Post- as Media Time: Documentary Experiments and the Rhetoric of Ruin Gazing 101 4. Post-Socialism in Hong Kong: Zone Urbanism and Marxist Phenomenology 146 5. The Ethics of Representing Precarity: Film in the Era of Global Complicity 184 Epilogue 218 Notes 223 Bibliography 245 Index 259

    £25.19

  • Beijing from Below

    Duke University Press Beijing from Below

    Book SynopsisHarriet Evans tells the history of the residents in Dashalarnow redeveloped and gentrified but once one of the Beijing's poorest neighborhoodsto show how their experiences complicate official state narratives of Chinese economic development and progress.Trade Review“Through a series of engaging and entirely unique ethnographic oral histories of the subaltern residents of a now all-but-destroyed Beijing neighborhood, Harriet Evans evokes a community, a fractured class, and a way of life that have now surely disappeared into the area's reconstructed shiny commercialism. Never central actors on any stage, and barely bit extras on the stage of Beijing's transformations, Evans's interlocutors are the kinds of people who disappear in any history. Her talent in rendering these left-behind urban denizens is astonishing. Beijing from Below makes a huge contribution. -- Rebecca E. Karl, author of * The Magic of Concepts: History and the Economic in Twentieth-Century China *“Harriet Evans makes visible a world that has been hiding in plain sight—the packed courtyards and dense social networks of one of Beijing's poorest neighborhoods. Drawing upon many years of conversation with residents and archival research, Evans provides a compelling account of everyday struggles and pleasures in a community that has been shaped, and neglected, by state policies. Beijing from Below raises profound questions about the reach of an ambitious revolution, even within its own capital city.” -- Gail Hershatter, author of * Women and China’s Revolutions *“[Beijing from Below] is a first-hand study which describes the lives of ordinary people at the grassroots, or more accurately at the urban roots, in the form of story-telling.... Only by reading the book can we appreciate the depth and detail of [Evans’] findings....” -- Michael Sheringham * Asian Affairs *“Harriet Evans’s Beijing from Below presents an exceptional insight into the precarious lives of what Evans calls the ‘subalterns of history’.... It is a valuable read for anyone interested in China’s urban transformation and its effects on urban populations, subalternity and precarity.” -- Laura Vermeeren * China Information *“A first-hand study which describes the lives of ordinary people at the grassroots, or more accurately at the urban roots, in the form of storytelling.... Only by reading the book can we appreciate the depth and detail of her findings.” -- Michael Sheringham * East Asia *“[Beijing from Below] is a must for anyone who has a warm heart for Beijing, or who is interested in how Chinese urban development affects the lives of the population.... Evans gives a face to the rickshaw drivers, sellers of tourist paraphernalia in Tian'anmen Square, the dishwashers in restaurants and other nameless people who populate Dahalar.” -- Judith van de Bovenkamp * China 2025 *“Beijing from Below utilizes thae anlytical rigor of ethnography to contextualize and theorize social experience without sacrificing the detailed and unique richness of each individual story.... The writing is compelling, and students of all levels (from undergraduate to graduate) would benefit from this ethnography.” -- Jenny Chio * China Review International *“[Beijing from Below] gives the reader the feeling of being fully immersed in the lives of the residents of Dashalar.... The book will be of great value to anyone interested in Chinese urbanization, memory studies, public history, civilizing processes, use of cultural heritage, politics of identities and agency of the urban poor." -- Florence Graezer Bideau * The China Quarterly *“Beijing from Below is an important work. . . . In a book rich in detail and analysis, Harriet Evans takes the reader into a respectful and considered examination of the lives of Dashalar’s residents and their struggles to survive.” -- Anna Hayes * Asian Studies Review *“Beijing From Below impresses for the capacity to offer the space of discourse to those who are losing their physical space, amidst a steadfast urban transformation. The way Evans acknowledges and brings their voices to the core is as poignant as it is rigorous, making Beijing from Below a fulfilling reading, and an indispensable work for future research in the field." -- Plácido González Martínez * Orientalistische Literaturzeitung *“By any standards, this is an extraordinarily rich work, and it is all the more valuable in illuminating a transformative period in Beijing’s (and China’s) history, foregrounding the stories of people and families whose voices are still relatively rarely heard.” -- Marjorie Dryburgh * Biography *

    £25.19

  • Musicophilia in Mumbai

    Duke University Press Musicophilia in Mumbai

    Book SynopsisTejaswini Niranjana traces the place of Hindustani classical music in Mumbai throughout the long twentieth century, showing how the widespread love of music throughout the city created a culture of collective listening and social subjects who embodied new forms of modernity.Trade Review“Tejaswini Niranjana's beautifully written book gives us a glimpse into the ways in which Hindustani classical music enables distinct performances of modernity in a postcolonial context. She takes us on a fascinating journey across performative spaces while powerfully and subtly portraying the lives and struggles of musicians and showing how gender, caste, class, and religious identity refract their subjectivities. I greatly appreciate and am moved by the material she presents in this book.” -- Purnima Mankekar, author of * Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality *“In her highly accessible, enjoyable, and immensely informative book, Tejaswini Niranjana—an astute and sympathetic cultural theorist—weaves musical genealogies and musician biographies into rich descriptions of the lives, emotions, and lived spaces of musicians and their audiences. Her centering of enjoyment, pleasure, and love in the study of Hindustani music is refreshing. Beautifully written, Musicophilia in Mumbai will set the standard for new waves of scholarship on Hindustani music and India's other classical traditions.” -- Anna Morcom, author of * Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance: Cultures of Exclusion *"A fascinating journey across the city… Musicophilia in Mumbai will, undoubtedly, set the standard for more scholarship on Hindustani music as also India's other gharanas. Even if the study is deeply localized and empirically distinct, similar patterns can be traced elsewhere in South Asia. The book suggests that the relationship between cultural practice and the formation of the social subject can be expressed in many ways and many contexts—especially in the 'non-west.'" -- Bhaskar Parichha * KITAAB *"For the discerning consumer, the current proliferation of texts on and about Hindustani Classical Music is a munificence worth exploring. Tejaswini Niranjana's Musicophilia in Mumbai ought to occupy a prominent position within this largesse, thanks to its combination of excellent scholarship, accessible language, and sagacious approach." -- S.D. Chaudhuri * Telegraph India *"An important text for anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and historians seeking to understand modernity in urban India. Moreover, Niranjana's careful attention to the ways that actual people construe urban sociality, produce subjectivity, and construct modernity should recommend it to a wider audience interested in global cities." -- David Strohl * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"Musicophilia in Mumbai will likely be most interesting to scholars in the fields of South Asian studies, performance studies, and ethnomusicology. It will also be useful to those seeking to understand how the organization of urban space impacts social relations through musical performance.… Grounded in historical and ethnographic research, Niranjana's book is a multilayered resource connecting the past and present of this dynamic art form." -- Rehanna Kheshgi * Journal of Asian Studies *“The remembered and physical worlds of musical life in Bombay city over the long 20th century are well portrayed. . . . I recommend [Musicophilia in Mumbai] highly for those who love Indian music.” -- Andrew Alter * Asian Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. On Not Being Able to Learn Music 1 1. "Yaa Nagari Mein Lakh Darwaza": Musicophilia and the Lingua Musica in Mumbai 19 2. Mehfil (Performance): The Spaces of Music 46 3. Deewaana (The Mad One): The Lover of Music 86 4. Taleem: Pedagogy and the Performing Subject 128 5. Nearness as Distance, or Distance as Nearness 162 Afterword 181 Glossary 199 Notes 205 Selected Bibliography 227 Index 235

    £25.19

  • Reenchanting Modernity

    Duke University Press Reenchanting Modernity

    Book SynopsisMayfair Yang examines the reemergence of religious life and ritual after decades of enforced secularized life in the coastal city of Wenzhou, showing how local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism influence economic development and the structure of civil society.Trade Review“Mayfair Yang's wonderful ethnography reveals an alternative ‘ritual economy’ under the dizzying churn of market relations in China. It is attuned to giving, reciprocity, and the materialization of a social and spiritual life. While committed to wealth-making, the people of Wenzhou are by the same token committed to the health of their communal lives.” -- Prasenjit Duara, Duke University“Mayfair Yang's compelling account of the re-enchantment of everyday life in Wenzhou, China, reveals lines of flight through which re-ritualization reworks capitalist accumulation to produce new communal relations. A must-read for anyone interested in alternative possibilities for China's future.” -- Kenneth Dean, Raffles Professor of Humanities, National University of Singapore"An engaging, diachronic portrayal of recent religious developments… I strongly recommend it to readers interested in these topics, and I would also recommend sections of it for certain graduate and advanced undergraduate classes on Buddhism." -- Douglas Gildow * H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews *"Re-enchanting Modernity clearly deserves recognition for its presentation of salient ethnographic data combined with innovated inquires, all of which calls our attention to the resilience of Chinese religious beliefs and practices while adapting to the challenges of the modern era. . . . Yang's findings should inspire future generations of scholars to undertake further ethnographic research on this vitally important topic." -- Paul R. Katz * Review of Religion and Chinese Society *"Re-enchanting Modernity is a terrific study of the relationship between religion, state, and civil society in post-Mao China. . . . A must-read." -- Jules Zhao Liu * China Review International *"Re-enchanting Modernity presents a very intriguing and in-depth ethnographic investigation of religion and ritual in modern China." -- Yujie Zhu * Journal of Anthropological Research *"Yang’s book is an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship examining post-Mao China’s religious resurgences and the broader conditions under which modernity brings about the (re)production of new and older forms of enchantment. I also find the book highly relevant and refreshing in providing insight into some of the complexities of rural China’s emerging religious civil society in ways that defy and push back against the current resurgence of Orientalism in the 'liberal' West with respect to 'illiberal' China." -- Micah F. Morton * Anthropos *"This book contains some of the most compelling analyses of Chinese society I have read, and it will continue to nourish future debates. As Yang powerfully suggests, pluralized discussions of civil society and the ritual economy may help bring alternative visions of society and economy into being." -- Jiazhi Fengjiang * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Part I. Introduction 1 1. From "Superstition" to "People's Customs": An Ethnographic Discovery of Key Questions in Wenzhou 1 2. The Wenzhou Model of Rural Development in China 32 Part II. Religious Diversity and Syncretism in Wenzhou 49 3. Popular Registry: Deities, Spirit Mediums, Ancestors, Ghosts, and Fengshui 51 4. Daoism: Ancient Gods, Boisterous Rituals, and Hearthside Priests 92 5. Buddhist Religiosity: The Wheel of Life, Death, and Rebirth 125 Part III. Religious Civil Society and Ritual Economy 159 6. Sprouts of Religious Civil Society: Temples, Localities, and Communities 161 7. The Rebirth of the Lineage: Creative Unfolding and Multiplicity of Forms 190 8. Of Mothers, Goddesses, and Bodhisattvas: Patriarchal Structures and Women's Religious Agency 224 9. Broadening and Pluralizing the Modern Category of "Civil Society": A Friendly Quarrel with Durkhelm 257 10. What's Missing in the Wenzhou Model? The "Ritual Economy" and "Wasting of Wealth" 279 Conclusion 315 Appendix A. Chronology of Chinese Dynasties 321 Appendix B. Notes on Currency, Weights, Measurements, and Chinese Romanization and Pronunciation 323 Appendix C. Religious Sites Visited in Wenzhou by Author, 1990–2016 325 Notes 331 Glossary 335 References 345 Index 365

    £27.90

  • Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema

    Duke University Press Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema

    Book SynopsisDaisuke Miyao reveals the undetected influence that Japanese art and aesthetics had on early cinema and the pioneering films of the Lumiére brothers.Trade Review“A major scholar of the cinema of Japan, Daisuke Miyao is especially adept at discerning the connections between Japanese and other film cultures. His new book, which explores the cultural relationship between Japan and France, brings many aspects of cinema's earliest years to light. He uncovers a tremendous amount of new material in Japanese and French that specialists in Japanese cinema and the invention of cinema will find fascinating.” -- Tom Gunning, coauthor of * Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema *“In this remarkably ambitious study Daisuke Miyao complicates our understanding of Orientalism in early cinema: instead of being something that the West does to a passive East, Orientalism becomes a multipronged adaptation of artistic techniques that originated in Japan and were exported to France. Along the way we learn a great deal about the emergence of female film actors in Japan and the interrelationship between image composition in painting and cinema. An excellent and important book.” -- Michael Bourdaghs, author of * Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop *"This fascinating study examines the relationship between the birth of Japanese cinema and the Lumière brothers' company in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. . . . The author is careful and succinct in making his point, and he provides myriad citations. This well-documented book will be valuable for art historians and Asia specialists as well as for those studying film. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals." -- G. R. Butters Jr * Choice *"The book does not waste a single word.… This is an important book upon which scholarship will rely in the future. It opens the door to new avenues of research." -- Sonia Coman * Journal of Japonisme *"This is both a focused and wide-ranging book which will beguile scholars of cinema, art historians, and anyone interested in east-west relations and in the part played by contingency in the history of cultural exchange." -- Akane Kawakami * French Studies *"This is a fascinating book, well researched and well illustrated, which sheds light on an important two-way intersection between Japanese and Western artistic cultures and on how that intersection shaped the technique, imagery and narrative strategies of an emerging artistic medium." -- Alexander Jacoby * Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film *"A very timely and provocative attempt to decipher the entangled relationships among Orientalism, early cinema, and Japanese modernization." -- Naoki Yamamoto * The Journal of Japanese Studies *"The book is written in accessible prose for both a specialist and wider audience, while the main arguments are clear and coherent, and easy to follow. . . . Miyao examines the transnational flows of cinema between Japan and France, and the crosscultural exchanges between fine arts, photography and cinema in the early period, and provides a fertile reading of the development of early cinema at the time of imperialist projects, and charts new avenues for future research on the relationship between cinema and visual cultural studies. This book would certainly appeal to scholars working in areas of early cinema, cultural history, art history, Japanese cinema, French cinema, and transnational cinema." -- Ana Grgic * Early Popular Visual Culture *"Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema fills a gap between film history, Japonisme, and the Orientalist discourse and brings a new perspective into these fields. Backed up by a close examination of a large number of primary sources, including the 1428 Lumière films and plenty of photographs and paintings, Miyao not only presents a solid statement about the correlation between Japonisme and the birth of cinema and the two-way communication between Japanese culture and the Western world but also provides a unique approach to the discussion of Eurocentrism and the West/East opposition." -- Ruoyi Bian * Film Criticism *"Miyao’s account of the birth of cinema is remarkable in a number of respects. Not only does it open new dimensions for aesthetic analysis of early cinema but it also does so through a serious engagement with its transnational formation and local specificity, without losing sight of the ways in which the aesthetic potential of cinematic expression lent itself to different kinds of capture. Perhaps most remarkably, Miyao makes the history of early cinema feel newly relevant to how we understand the global culture of contemporary Japan. Looking at cinema when it was new allows him to discover something about it that was never old." -- Thomas Lamarre * Art Journal *

    £90.10

  • Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture

    Duke University Press Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture

    Book SynopsisAlessandro Russo rethinks the history of China's Cultural Revolution, arguing that it must be understood as a mass political experiment aimed at thoroughly reexamining the tenets of communism itself.Trade Review“Published forty years after Mao's death, Alessandro Russo's Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture must be seen as the first book that studies China's Cultural Revolution from the intellectual point of view of the central question of this extraordinary movement itself: what can the real destiny of the communist idea be after fundamental experiments at the level of the state power in Russia and China? Across a precise experience made of readings of all sort of texts written in the fire of the movement or after, historical clarifications of some crucial sequences, personal inquiries, and intellectual synthesis, Russo simultaneously proposes a sort of complex but clear image of the event and an essential examination of its strategic goals and final failure. All that in the direction of a clear understanding of the possibility of a new communism.” -- Alain Badiou“This book should be widely read. Alessandro Russo is an inventive, creative philosopher who contributes new materials, new interpretations, and new ways of examining the Cultural Revolution.” -- Tani Barlow, George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities, Rice University" A model of historical inquiry that should be read by those interested in modern Chinese and East Asian history and revolutionary movements in general." -- M. J. Wert * Choice *"For all who would pose the question, What is a Revolution? in its political and theoretical registers, Russo’s book is invaluable. It should be widely read, both inside and outside the China field." -- Christopher Connery * PRC History Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Part I. A Theatrical Prologue 1. Afterlives of an "Upright Official" 11 2. Political and Historical Dilemmas 26 3. An Unresolved Controversy 48 Part II. Mao's Anxiety and Resolve 4. A Probable Defeat and Revisionism 91 5. Shrinking the Cultural Superego 104 Part III. A Political Test for Class Politics 6. Testing the Organization 141 7. A Subjective Split in the Working Class 167 8. Facing a Self-Defeat 204 Part IV. At the Edge of an Epochal Turning Point 9. Intellectual Conditions for a Political Assessment 239 10. Foundations of Deng Xiaoping's Strategy 263 Notes 285 Bibliography 323 Index 343

    £75.65

  • Enduring Cancer

    Duke University Press Enduring Cancer

    Book SynopsisDwaipayan Banerjee explores the efforts of Delhi's urban poor to create a livable life with cancer as they negotiate an over-extended health system unequipped to respond to the disease.Trade Review“In this wonderful ethnography, Dwaipayan Banerjee shows how cancer in India exists across many relationships, aspirations, frustrations, gendered battles, caregiving gestures, medical sciences, and familial trials. In its lives far beyond the body, cancer is both concealed within the folds of secrecy and stigma and yet still able to reveal the hidden stories that only it can tell. Subtly written and ethnographically rich, this book will have a very wide reach.” -- Vincanne Adams, editor of * Metrics: What Counts in Global Health *“How do people navigate the uncertainties of cancer? Dwaipayan Banerjee's vivid ethnography shows how secrecy and silence are the currencies for knowing and managing cancer's diagnosis, treatment, pain, and survival in India. He demonstrates the profound implications this has for the ways people voice illness and forge connections with others in uncertain times. This timely and important book will be a landmark for thinking about survival and endurance in medical anthropology, science studies, public health, and South Asian studies.” -- Harris Solomon, author of * Metabolic Living: Food, Fat, and the Absorption of Illness in India *“In Banerjee’s paradigm-shifting Enduring Cancer, we learn of a politics of endurance and invention; we also see how the study of cancer in India offers a unique opening to critique structural failures and reimagine a collective politics of care.” -- Durba Mitra * Isis *“In his compelling book, Enduring Cancer, Dwaipayan Banerjee shuns common contemporary framings of cancer in India.... Banerjee’s book is a sensitive analysis of what it means to battle cancer and poverty at the same time in contemporary Delhi. As such, it will appeal for anthropologists interested in the politics of life and death, health and disease.” -- Éva-Rozália Hölzle * PoLAR *“This eloquently written ethnography sheds light on the social life of cancer not only in India but for humankind.... It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the anthropology of healthcare and medicine in India and for global and public health policymakers and practitioners.” -- Cecilia Coale Van Hollen * Journal of Anthropological Research *"A sensitive and insightful exploration of the fraught relational worlds within which cancer appears. . . . By juxtaposing hopeful aesthetic representations of cancer with its lived ethical dilemmas, Banerjee offers the analytic of endurance, showing how his interlocutors are responsive to the durability of pain, the intensity of social vulnerabilities, and the slow violence of incomplete medical care." -- Victoria Sheldon * Journal of Asian Studies *“A powerful book. . . . [Enduring Cancer] should be widely taught and read by medical anthropologists interested in noncommunicable diseases in the Global South, particularly South Asia, as well as by public health practitioners and bioethicists.” -- Saiba Varma * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *“Banerjee’s Enduring Cancer offers an ethnographically rich meditation on how cancer diagnoses amplify histories of embodied vulnerability, both interpersonal and infrastructural. . . . His use of eclectic source materials and a mixed-methodological approach gives EnduringCancer a rare analytic complexity.” -- Shireen Hamza & Kelsey Henry * Gender & History *“In a context where death is ever-present, state abandonment is all but assured, and radical social change is far from forthcoming, Banerjee gives voice to the quieter strategies of patients and caregivers who must find ways to endure, and to live and die ethically, in the present.” -- Gowri Vijayakumar * The Journal of Development Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Concealing Cancer 35 2. Cancer Conjugality 64 3. Researching Pain, Practicing Empathy 84 4. Cancer Memoirs 121 5. Cancer Films 142 6. 171Endurance Notes 183 Bibliography 205 Index 219

    £90.10

  • Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema

    Duke University Press Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema

    Book SynopsisDaisuke Miyao reveals the undetected influence that Japanese art and aesthetics had on early cinema and the pioneering films of the Lumiére brothers.Trade Review“A major scholar of the cinema of Japan, Daisuke Miyao is especially adept at discerning the connections between Japanese and other film cultures. His new book, which explores the cultural relationship between Japan and France, brings many aspects of cinema's earliest years to light. He uncovers a tremendous amount of new material in Japanese and French that specialists in Japanese cinema and the invention of cinema will find fascinating.” -- Tom Gunning, coauthor of * Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema *“In this remarkably ambitious study Daisuke Miyao complicates our understanding of Orientalism in early cinema: instead of being something that the West does to a passive East, Orientalism becomes a multipronged adaptation of artistic techniques that originated in Japan and were exported to France. Along the way we learn a great deal about the emergence of female film actors in Japan and the interrelationship between image composition in painting and cinema. An excellent and important book.” -- Michael Bourdaghs, author of * Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop *"This fascinating study examines the relationship between the birth of Japanese cinema and the Lumière brothers' company in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. . . . The author is careful and succinct in making his point, and he provides myriad citations. This well-documented book will be valuable for art historians and Asia specialists as well as for those studying film. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals." -- G. R. Butters Jr * Choice *"The book does not waste a single word.… This is an important book upon which scholarship will rely in the future. It opens the door to new avenues of research." -- Sonia Coman * Journal of Japonisme *"This is both a focused and wide-ranging book which will beguile scholars of cinema, art historians, and anyone interested in east-west relations and in the part played by contingency in the history of cultural exchange." -- Akane Kawakami * French Studies *"This is a fascinating book, well researched and well illustrated, which sheds light on an important two-way intersection between Japanese and Western artistic cultures and on how that intersection shaped the technique, imagery and narrative strategies of an emerging artistic medium." -- Alexander Jacoby * Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film *"A very timely and provocative attempt to decipher the entangled relationships among Orientalism, early cinema, and Japanese modernization." -- Naoki Yamamoto * The Journal of Japanese Studies *"The book is written in accessible prose for both a specialist and wider audience, while the main arguments are clear and coherent, and easy to follow. . . . Miyao examines the transnational flows of cinema between Japan and France, and the crosscultural exchanges between fine arts, photography and cinema in the early period, and provides a fertile reading of the development of early cinema at the time of imperialist projects, and charts new avenues for future research on the relationship between cinema and visual cultural studies. This book would certainly appeal to scholars working in areas of early cinema, cultural history, art history, Japanese cinema, French cinema, and transnational cinema." -- Ana Grgic * Early Popular Visual Culture *"Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema fills a gap between film history, Japonisme, and the Orientalist discourse and brings a new perspective into these fields. Backed up by a close examination of a large number of primary sources, including the 1428 Lumière films and plenty of photographs and paintings, Miyao not only presents a solid statement about the correlation between Japonisme and the birth of cinema and the two-way communication between Japanese culture and the Western world but also provides a unique approach to the discussion of Eurocentrism and the West/East opposition." -- Ruoyi Bian * Film Criticism *"Miyao’s account of the birth of cinema is remarkable in a number of respects. Not only does it open new dimensions for aesthetic analysis of early cinema but it also does so through a serious engagement with its transnational formation and local specificity, without losing sight of the ways in which the aesthetic potential of cinematic expression lent itself to different kinds of capture. Perhaps most remarkably, Miyao makes the history of early cinema feel newly relevant to how we understand the global culture of contemporary Japan. Looking at cinema when it was new allows him to discover something about it that was never old." -- Thomas Lamarre * Art Journal *

    £22.49

  • Enduring Cancer

    Duke University Press Enduring Cancer

    Book SynopsisDwaipayan Banerjee explores the efforts of Delhi's urban poor to create a livable life with cancer as they negotiate an over-extended health system unequipped to respond to the disease.Trade Review“In this wonderful ethnography, Dwaipayan Banerjee shows how cancer in India exists across many relationships, aspirations, frustrations, gendered battles, caregiving gestures, medical sciences, and familial trials. In its lives far beyond the body, cancer is both concealed within the folds of secrecy and stigma and yet still able to reveal the hidden stories that only it can tell. Subtly written and ethnographically rich, this book will have a very wide reach.” -- Vincanne Adams, editor of * Metrics: What Counts in Global Health *“How do people navigate the uncertainties of cancer? Dwaipayan Banerjee's vivid ethnography shows how secrecy and silence are the currencies for knowing and managing cancer's diagnosis, treatment, pain, and survival in India. He demonstrates the profound implications this has for the ways people voice illness and forge connections with others in uncertain times. This timely and important book will be a landmark for thinking about survival and endurance in medical anthropology, science studies, public health, and South Asian studies.” -- Harris Solomon, author of * Metabolic Living: Food, Fat, and the Absorption of Illness in India *“In Banerjee’s paradigm-shifting Enduring Cancer, we learn of a politics of endurance and invention; we also see how the study of cancer in India offers a unique opening to critique structural failures and reimagine a collective politics of care.” -- Durba Mitra * Isis *“In his compelling book, Enduring Cancer, Dwaipayan Banerjee shuns common contemporary framings of cancer in India.... Banerjee’s book is a sensitive analysis of what it means to battle cancer and poverty at the same time in contemporary Delhi. As such, it will appeal for anthropologists interested in the politics of life and death, health and disease.” -- Éva-Rozália Hölzle * PoLAR *“This eloquently written ethnography sheds light on the social life of cancer not only in India but for humankind.... It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the anthropology of healthcare and medicine in India and for global and public health policymakers and practitioners.” -- Cecilia Coale Van Hollen * Journal of Anthropological Research *"A sensitive and insightful exploration of the fraught relational worlds within which cancer appears. . . . By juxtaposing hopeful aesthetic representations of cancer with its lived ethical dilemmas, Banerjee offers the analytic of endurance, showing how his interlocutors are responsive to the durability of pain, the intensity of social vulnerabilities, and the slow violence of incomplete medical care." -- Victoria Sheldon * Journal of Asian Studies *“A powerful book. . . . [Enduring Cancer] should be widely taught and read by medical anthropologists interested in noncommunicable diseases in the Global South, particularly South Asia, as well as by public health practitioners and bioethicists.” -- Saiba Varma * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *“Banerjee’s Enduring Cancer offers an ethnographically rich meditation on how cancer diagnoses amplify histories of embodied vulnerability, both interpersonal and infrastructural. . . . His use of eclectic source materials and a mixed-methodological approach gives EnduringCancer a rare analytic complexity.” -- Shireen Hamza & Kelsey Henry * Gender & History *“In a context where death is ever-present, state abandonment is all but assured, and radical social change is far from forthcoming, Banerjee gives voice to the quieter strategies of patients and caregivers who must find ways to endure, and to live and die ethically, in the present.” -- Gowri Vijayakumar * The Journal of Development Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Concealing Cancer 35 2. Cancer Conjugality 64 3. Researching Pain, Practicing Empathy 84 4. Cancer Memoirs 121 5. Cancer Films 142 6. 171Endurance Notes 183 Bibliography 205 Index 219

    £22.49

  • Revisiting Womens Cinema

    Duke University Press Revisiting Womens Cinema

    Book SynopsisIn Revisiting Women’s Cinema, Lingzhen Wang ponders the roots of contemporary feminist stagnation and the limits of both commercial mainstream and elite minor cultures by turning to socialist women filmmakers in modern China. She foregrounds their sociopolitical engagements, critical interventions, and popular artistic experiments, offering a new conception of socialist and postsocialist feminisms, mainstream culture, and women’s cinema. Wang highlights the films of Wang Ping and Dong Kena in the 1950s and 1960s and Zhang Nuanxin and Huang Shuqin in the 1980s and 1990s to unveil how they have been profoundly misread through extant research paradigms entrenched in Western Cold War ideology, post-second-wave cultural feminism, and post-Mao intellectual discourses. Challenging received interpretations, she elucidates how socialist feminism and culture were conceptualized and practiced in relation to China’s search not only for national independence and economic deTrade Review“Insisting we hear, listen, and see the voices and actions of women filmmakers in China, Lingzhen Wang provides a nuanced examination of women's cinema and feminism that attends to national and transnational trajectories. She develops theoretically sophisticated and politically incisive critiques of how dominant frameworks in socialist China and throughout the world configured the realms of possibility for making, seeing, and recognizing socialist and Chinese women's mainstream film. An exciting, innovative, and theoretically rich project.” -- Tina Mai Chen, coeditor of * Film, History, and Cultural Citizenship: Sites of Production *“Lingzhen Wang is the first Chinese scholar writing in English to point out the eerie parallels between post-Mao feminism and post-second-wave Anglo-European feminism as she negotiates the political legacies of two cultures, illuminating the traditions of the one for the other. Revisiting Women's Cinema is likely to rock the history of world cinema and inspire a resurgence of interest in the project of globalizing feminist film and media theory. I can think of no other book on feminism and motion picture film history that is more important to the field than this one.” -- Jane Gaines, Professor of Film, Columbia University"Revisiting Women’s Cinema is a rich and thought-provoking revisionist account of Chinese women’s cinema. . . . In addition to reinvigorating feminist theory, the book opens up new avenues for exploring the interaction of the political and the aesthetic, the mainstream and the experimental in Chinese cinema." -- Xiaoning Lu * The China Quarterly *

    £75.65

  • Mekong Dreaming

    Duke University Press Mekong Dreaming

    Book SynopsisAs vast infrastructure projects transform the Mekong River, Andrew Alan Johnson explores of how rapid environmental change affects how people live, believe, and dream.Trade Review“Mekong Dreaming is both an exemplary work of ethnography and a timely and important intervention in contemporary debates in anthropological theory. Focusing on northeast Thailand and the effects of dam construction on the Mekong among local fishing and farming communities, this book's original contribution consists in its foregrounding of uncertainty and unknowability in the lived experience of non-western cosmologies.” -- Stuart J. McLean, coeditor of * Crumpled Paper Boat: Experiments in Ethnographic Writing *“Andrew Alan Johnson's lucid and richly detailed ethnography of the Thai-Lao border shows how the inchoate and the unknowable can be apprehended through genuinely empirical research. In this masterful analysis, Johnson shows how a marginalized population grapples with the intensified environmental uncertainties generated by modern technology and political upheaval by deploying a cosmological vision that enfolds piety, potentiality, and materiality in a tangled experiential frame.” -- Michael Herzfeld, author of * Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok *"The book is clearly written, presenting a compelling narrative of daily life and also delving into complex topics without drowning in academic jargon. As such it is accessible for both students and experts. . . . The power of Johnson’s approach is that rather than simply casting uncertainty as a negative, he explores the ways in which uncertainty—the power of 'maybe'—can act as a potency rather than simply something to be worked around." -- Erin B. Taylor * Anthropology Book Forum *“Mekong Dreaming is a lovely, fluent ethnography of a river and its political ecology, focusing on the people on one bank of the Mekong where it forms a border between Thailand and Laos…. Johnson’s style is crisp and engaging and his dealings with recent theory are all concrete and pointed…. Johnson has produced political ethnography of a high order.” -- Leo Coleman * PoLAR Online *“This accessible anthropological work, Mekong Dreaming, demonstrates how infrastructural projects—in this case, hydropower dams on the Mekong—interrupt and reconfigure the social life of the river and relations of those whose fate has long been intertwined with its currents.” -- Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre * LSE Review of Books *“Johnson’s argument is complex, deftly interweaving fields as diverse as environmental anthropology, migration studies, Thai animism and mediumship, border studies, and more. The resulting ethnography is illuminating and compelling.” -- Mary Beth Mills * Journal of Anthropological Research *“Johnson’s writing is a pleasure: eclectic, erudite and sometimes eccentric.... He handles weighty concepts lightly, and doesn’t let unwieldy terminology upset the flow of the very reader-friendly text. He comes across as a committed, skilled and very human fieldworker.” -- Ashley Carruthers * Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology *“[Mekong Dreaming] will be a useful text in anthropology courses. I highly recommend this book as it...provides new and important insights.” -- Ian G. Baird * Sojourn *“[Mekong Dreaming] provides crucial insights into the interconnectedness between daily life, environment, and religious experiences.” -- Grzegorz Fraszczak * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Through a Glass, Darkly 1 1. Naga and Garuda 29 2. River Beings 69 3. Dwelling under Distant Suns 104 4. The River Grew Tired of Us 130 5. Human and Inhuman Worlds 161 Notes 171 Bibliography 179 Index 193

    £90.10

  • China in the World

    Duke University Press China in the World

    Book SynopsisBan Wang traces the shifting concept of the Chinese state from the late nineteenth century to the present, showing how the Confucian notion of tianxia—“all under heaven”—influences China’s dedication to contributing to and exchanging with a common world.Trade Review“What is China? How can the Chinese experience be brought to bear on world modernities? In China in the World, Ban Wang compellingly explores the rise and development of modern China in ever-changing cross-cultural contexts. It is an overarching engagement with the issues of self-perception, cultural representation, and transnational communication through the mediums of literature, cinema, and political treatise.” -- David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature, Harvard University“China in the World is an exceptional work in Chinese Studies. Ban Wang shifts focus to China’s place in the world and its imagination, presentation, and ideas for itself and the world. Wang’s wide vision, deep reading, and consistent conversation between history and reality shape the texture of this brilliant book.” -- Wang Hui, author of * China’s Twentieth Century: Revolution, Retreat, and the Road to Equality *"China in the World is an elegantly efficient volume. . . . I enjoyed reading the clearly articulated arguments and histories presented in China in the World, and I look forward to following the conversations it inspires." -- Julia Keblinska * Modern Chinese Culture and Literature *Table of ContentsSeries Editor's Foreword vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Empire, Nation, and World Vision 1 1. Morality and Global Vision in Kang Youwei's World Community 19 2. Nationalism, Moral Reform, and Tianxia in Liang Qichao 40 3. World Literature in the Mountains 59 4. Art, Politics, and Internationalism in Korean War Films 80 5. National Unity, Ethnicity, and Socialist Utopia in Five Golden Flowers 101 6. The Third World, Alternative Development, and Global Maoism 123 7. The Cold War, Depoliticization, and China in the American Classroom 148 8. Using the Past to Understand the Present 170 Notes 187 Bibliography 201 Index 211

    £72.25

  • Elementary Aspects of the Political

    Duke University Press Elementary Aspects of the Political

    Book SynopsisIn Elementary Aspects of the Political Prathama Banerjee moves beyond postcolonial and decolonial critiques of European political philosophy to rethink modern conceptions of 'the political' from the perspective of the global South. Drawing on Indian and Bengali practices and philosophies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Banerjee identifies four elements of the political: the self, action, the idea, and the people. She examines selfhood in light of precolonial Indic traditions of renunciation and realpolitik; action in the constitutive tension between traditional conceptions of karma and modern ideas of labor; the idea of equality as it emerges in the dialectic between spirituality and economics; and people in the friction between the structure of the political party and the atmospherics of fiction and theater. Throughout, Banerjee reasserts the historical specificity of political thought and challenges modern assumptions about the universality, primacy, anTrade Review“A brilliantly original study of the relation between philosophical ideas and political practice, this book by Prathama Banerjee explores how key ideas drawn from Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Western traditions have shaped the field of the political in India. While analyzing the complex and often ambiguous relations of the political with religion, economy, literature, theater, and art, she gives us many surprising new insights into such canonical thinkers as Bankim, Aurobindo, Gandhi, Iqbal, and Ambedkar.” -- Partha Chatterjee, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University“Simultaneously a contribution to history and to political theory, this insightful reading opens up a striking vantage point from which to explore the implications of the now-global concepts of political subjecthood, political action, political ideology, and "people." Prathama Banerjee's book exemplifies what it means when we say that postcolonial theory can redefine the very terms of political theory. In sum, this is a landmark work of immense originality and brilliance.” -- Ajay Skaria, author of * Unconditional Equality: Gandhi’s Religion of Resistance *“Elementary Aspects of the Political is not just about claiming or defining a non-European political theory, but aims to create new ways of thinking about politics.... Banerjee offers a framework that anyone interested in building political theory anew, regardless of regional expertise, may wish to consider.” -- Whitney Russell * PoLAR *“Banerjee provides a sophisticated contribution to long-standing debates regarding ‘the political’ that is grounded in histories from the Global South.... She shows the powerful aesthetic possibilities in political theorizing and acting across any number of borders that have traditionally delimited and reified particular conceptions of the political.” -- Stuart Gray * Perspectives on Politics *“There is much more to be said about this ambitious and erudite text. . . . By opening up the conceptual history of the political, Banerjee’s important book establishes itself as one that will be debated for a long time. It marks a new point of departure for thinking about the relations between postcolonial and decolonial history and philosophy.” -- Rochona Majumdar * History and Theory *“This extraordinarily nuanced book sets aside an older and rather tired trope of the critique of Eurocentric categories and embarks on a robust enterprise of generating a mode of thinking from the Global South. What is made clear throughout [Elementary Aspects of the Political] are the different genealogies, vocabularies, and histories that go into the thinking of the idea of ‘the political.’” -- Thomas Biebricher * Political Theory *

    £98.60

  • Hindutva as Political Monotheism

    Duke University Press Hindutva as Political Monotheism

    Book SynopsisIn this genealogy of Hindu right-wing nationalism, Anustup Basu connects Carl Schmitt's notion of political theology to traditional theorems of Hindu sovereignty and nationhood, illustrating how Western and Indian theorists imagined a single Hindu political and religious people.Trade Review“Hindutva as Political Monotheism is an original, important book, brilliant in its juxtaposition of major strands of European Enlightenment thought and Indian nationalist thought.” -- Peter van der Veer, author of * The Value of Comparison *“A project of impressive intellectual scope and reach, based on erudition across a number of fields and archives. Hindutva as Political Monotheism is a much-awaited and timely study of Hindu nationalism that both extends the scope of well-worn historical terrain and reconfigures it through an utterly fresh conceptual lens. Given the present attempt to transform India’s democratic republic into a Hindu state, it could not have come at a more appropriate time. It will be an invaluable aid in understanding the contemporary situation in historical terms.” -- Aamir Mufti, author of * Forget English! Orientalisms and World Literatures *"A powerful, erudite, and timely study of the historical formations and contemporary manifestations of Hindu nationalism in India.... The laudable interdisciplinarity of the book and its rich archive of literature, film, and new media provide compelling and diverse entry points for a wide range of readers.” -- Manav Ratti * South Asian Review *“Basu’s monograph is a path-breaking attempt to trace [Hindutva’s] genealogy as a political monotheism.... Hindutva is an eclectic and multidimensional work that makes major interventions in multiple knowledge-fields.” -- Amit R. Baishya * Boundary 2 *“Anustup Basu’s monograph, Hindutva as Political Monotheism, presents a hitherto underutilized lens of analysis. The book extends the works of political theorist Carl Schmitt on the monotheistic imperative found in the European theorizations of religious and ethnocentric nationhood, to India’s history with ethnonationalism. . . . [It] does an excellent job of tracing [Hindutva’s] origins.” -- Iman Fathima Sheik Abdullah * Journal of Muslim Philanthropy & Civil Society *“Anustup Basu takes a researcher’s perspective and approaches the topic with academic rigor and passion, thereby contributing immensely to the study of the subject of Hindutva. . . . Elaborately designed, the text invites readers to delve deeper into the sociopolitical, religious, and cultural environment of contemporary India and with greater awareness address and encounter the fascistic structures of Hindutva 2.0.” -- Swapna Gopinath * Cultural Politics *"An original and erudite book, Hindutva as Political Monotheism is a tour de force in critical interpretation: it constructs an intellectual genealogy of Hindu religious philosophy, tracking its steady politicization from the late nineteenth century to the present-day." -- Bishnupriya Ghosh * Boundary 2 *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Questions Concerning the Hindu Political 11 2. The Hindu Nation as Organism 28 3. The Indian Monotheism 89 4. Hindutva 2.0 as Advertised Monotheism 150 Notes 209 Bibliography 251 Index

    £98.60

  • The Occupied Clinic

    Duke University Press The Occupied Clinic

    Book SynopsisSaiba Varma explores spaces of military and humanitarian care in Indian-controlled Kashmirthe world's most militarized placeto examine the psychic, ontological, and political entanglements between medicine and violence.Trade Review“The Occupied Clinic situates psychiatry as humanitarian state strategy in Kashmir. Saiba Varma offers us a beautifully crafted ethnography, providing political insight without objectifying the recipients of care as victims or sufferers. She articulates the place of mental health and the nuances and difficulties of everyday psychiatric practice in a state of exception that has come to be normalized over decades of military occupation. The need for such an analysis, at once poignant and nonpolemical, cannot be overstated.” -- Kaushik Sunder Rajan, author of * Pharmocracy: Value, Politics and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine *“The Occupied Clinic is a chilling, thought provoking, and beautifully written work that is likely to garner a great deal of attention for its arguments and intellectual generosity. Saiba Varma's astute and incisive portrayal of life, survival, and care in conditions of occupation is original and valuable.” -- Sarah Pinto, author of * The Doctor and Mrs. A.: Ethics and Counter-Ethics in an Indian Dream Analysis *"The Occupied Clinic could hardly be any timelier.… A thought-provoking and rigorously crafted ethnography that advances the growing discussions of care and its paradoxes in anthropology.… A must-read for scholars interested in the transdisciplinary discussions of clinical, governmental, nongovernmental, and communitarian modes of care." -- Tankut Atuk * Anthropology Book Forum *"Packed with many narratives and experiences, Varma's book is deeply disturbing and incisive. It turns many assumptions, inferences and even the concept of care as a redemptive practice, on its head or inside out. It needs to be debated and discussed far more thoroughly for its content." -- Freny Manecksha * Indian Journal of Medical Ethics *"The book is a deeply moving work from a committed medical anthropologist. It will be of great help to anyone who wants to understand the cost of living in a highly and densely militarized zone of the world." -- Khalid Bashir Gura * Kashmir Life *"A book crafted with professional care. . . . Even as Varma displaces the meanings of lazily deployed words like Care, Siege, Disturbed Area, Disappeared, Shock, Disbelief, Gratitude and Duty by imbuing them with varied local senses, she comes into her own while she dwells on the vernacular used by her informants. She labours to translate the meanings of dense words they invoke and theorises on some of them at length. At times I liked the train of her thought so much that I wished for more." -- Gowhar Fazili * The Wire *"Varma’s rich ethnographic insights demonstrate how militarism and care are not distinct but rather closely bounded. . . . Clinicians, undergraduate students, and anyone curious about the fraught translation between biomedical psychiatry and local contexts of suffering will greatly appreciate Varma's dexterous and generous ethnography. Varma’s beautiful writing, interspersed with vibrant images and artwork and haunting poetry, will be greatly appreciated. . . ." -- David Ansari * Anthropology and Humanism *"Weaving together ethnographic narratives with poetry, the book offers a compelling analysis that at once contributes to conversations in medical anthropology, feminist studies of care, and the anthropology of humanitarianism and violence." -- Victoria Sheldon * Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsMap viii Note on Transliteration ix Acknowledgments xi Letter to No One xv Introduction. Care 1 1. Siege 32 2. A Disturbed Area 67 Interlude. The Disappeared 101 3. Shock 114 4. Debrief 144 5. Gratitude 167 Notes 201 Bibliography 253 Index 273

    £98.60

  • Radiation and Revolution

    Duke University Press Radiation and Revolution

    Book SynopsisPolitical theorist and anticapitalist activist Sabu Kohso uses the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster to illuminate the relationship between nuclear power, capitalism, and the nation-state, showing how nuclear power has become the organizing principle of the global order.Trade Review“Writer, political activist, and translator Sabu Kohso provides a timely intervention into discussions of the catastrophic event that overwhelmed Japan's Fukushima Prefecture on March 11, 2011. Kohso has brilliantly captured both the sad singularity and complex generality of the event and the unyielding process of its global consequences. At the heart of Kohso's account lies a nuclear industry now worryingly indistinguishable from global capitalism's new lease on life.” -- Harry Harootunian, author of * The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and Its Unaccounted Lives *“Turning the discussion of the Fukushima disaster and its ecological and social consequences into a reflection on the history of Japanese society and government from World War II to the present, Radiation and Revolution is a powerful, imaginative, and much-needed book.” -- Silvia Federici, author of * Beyond the Periphery of the Skin *“With regards to the creativity both of its content and its form, Radiation and Revolution constitutes a unique work, fulfilling Deleuze’s call for philosophy to invent ready-made concepts which could seize the singularity of reality. Kohso’s notions of ‘life-in-struggle’, ‘transmutations’ and his opposition between the ‘World’ and the ‘Earth’, will assuredly find echoes in other contexts, all marked by the radiation-like planetarization of politics.” -- Philippe Blouin * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *"Comparing Fukushima to other nuclear incidents, such as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, Kohso (who also goes by Kōso), a writer and an activist, posits that these disasters are symptomatic of another problem—that of authoritarian, capitalist power over Earth’s inhabitants, who live under persistent threat of catastrophe. The fleshing out of these ideas displays Kohso at his best, using careful research and interviews to create a compelling argument for confronting nuclear and other challenges with a global movement. . . . Recommended. Advanced undergraduates and graduate students." -- J. M. Morri * Choice *Table of ContentsPrologue. Writing through Fukushima ix Introduction. Disaster/Catastrophe/Apocalypse 1 1. Transmutation of Powers 17 2. Catastrophic Nation 55 3. Apocalyptic Capitalism 87 4. Climate Change of the Struggle 113 Epilogue. Forget Japan 161 Notes 167 Bibliography 183 Index 191

    £86.70

  • Building Socialism

    Duke University Press Building Socialism

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisChristina Schwenkel analyzes the collaboration between East German and Vietnamese architects and urban planners as they attempted to transform the bombed-out industrial city of Vinh into a model socialist city.Trade Review“A triumph of interdisciplinary and transnational scholarship! Following a compelling new case of international ‘high-socialist’ architecture, Christina Schwenkel bridges the histories of and scholarship on Eastern European and Asian socialisms. The oft-maligned but poorly understood city of Vinh proves to be an unexpected center of international solidarity and a riveting example of human resilience. Its story offers a significant perspective on Vietnamese history, socialist internationalism, postwar reconstruction, post-socialism, neoliberal redevelopment, and urban history.” -- Erik Harms, author of * Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon *“In this extraordinary book, the anthropological and architectural histories of the city of Vinh emerge between the hour zero when B-52s fly over Vinh and the ebbing of obsolescence. Christina Schwenkel addresses urban space and design in an enlightening and unsettling manner, evoking and explaining the ‘building of socialism’ as both a Vietnamese and an East German phenomenon in its postcolonial and postmodern contexts.” -- Rudolf Mrázek, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Michigan“Schwenkel explores the main built legacy of this alliance [between Vietnam and East Germany], the Quang Trung housing estate in Vinh.... The story she has to tell, and the research she has undertaken in several years living on the estate...[is] informative, surprising, and often very moving.” -- Owen Hatherley * Jacobin Magazine *“A model of transnational urban research, Building Socialism uncovers the history of Vinh’s role as a global planning hub, while also attending to the afterlife of socialist modernism for those residing in the city today." -- Katherine Zubovich * The Metropole *"Building Socialism is . . . an indispensable addition to our understanding of urban Asia." -- Abidin Kusno * Journal of Asian Studies *"The book offers a novel and broader understanding of the urban development projects in postwar Vietnam with its social and political trajectories aided by an impressive collection of archival material. . . . Altogether, Christina Schwenkel’s work is a refreshing and groundbreaking addition not only to the study of the global history of the GDR but, first and foremost, to the study of Vietnam’s building of socialism." -- Katrin Bahr * German Studies Review *"Exemplary scholarship. . . . The book's theoretical reflections challenge some calcified notions in current scholarship and intelligentsia, and show the incredibly similar housing experiences and cultural-imperialist tendencies of both capitalism and socialism." -- Esra Ackan * Berlin Journal *"Building Socialism is a remarkably illuminating transnational and interdisciplinary study of socialist nation building, examined through the lenses of internationalism, urban planning and architecture, and an ethnography of a mass housing estate. . . . The author very much succeeds in presenting a cohesive, theoretically rich work of in-depth investigation." -- Hazel Hahn * H-Urban *"Building Socialism is a captivating, imaginative, and significant contribution in anthropology, Vietnamese history, urban history, and history of urban planning. It is suitable for assigning in both graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses." -- Hazel Hahn * H-Urban, H-Net Reviews *"This engaging book ties together the legacies of the Vietnam War, East German urbanism, and contemporary neoliberal development to produce a narrative that is greater than the sum of its parts, shedding much-needed light on the complexity of modernism’s social and material durabilities." -- Samantha Maurer Fox * Anthropological Review *"Though somewhat theoretical, this book is ultimately accessible to a broad readership. It will be of most interest to scholars and students of urban planning, urban anthropology, and urban studies. Highly recommended. Lower division undergraduates through faculty; professionals" -- M. E. Pfeifer * Choice *"The book’s strength is that it expands our understanding of the multiplicity of urbanisms. . . . Building Socialism is an achievement that warrants the attention of every scholar interested in the urbanism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, well beyond Vietnam." -- Takanari Fujita * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *Table of ContentsList of Figures, Plates, and Tables vii Abbreviations xi A Note on Translation and Transliteration xiii Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 Part I. Ruination 1. Annihilation 25 Interlude. Urban Fragments 1 43 2. Evacuation 45 Interlude. Urban Fragments 76 3. Solidarity 78 Part 2. Reconstruction 4. Spirited Internationalism 105 Interlude. Urban Fragments 3 129 5. Rational Planning 131 Interlude. Urban Fragments 4 159 6. Utopian Housing 161 Part 3. Obsolescence 7. Indiscipline 211 8. Decay 232 9. Renovation 260 10. Revaluation 293 Conclusion. On the Future of Utopias Past 316 Notes 323 References 357 Index

    1 in stock

    £123.75

  • The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven

    Duke University Press The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven

    Book SynopsisMark W. Driscoll examines Western imperialism in East Asia throughout the nineteenth century and the devastating effects of what he calls climate caucasianism—the West's racialized pursuit of capital at the expense of people of color, women, and the environment.Trade Review“Mark W. Driscoll dazzlingly argues that at the origin of the Anthropocene lies the predatory behavior of European colonialism in East Asia—what he daringly terms "climate caucasianism", a historically unprecedented assemblage of extraction, coloniality, ecological devastation, commerce, and war. Driscoll's exquisite and brilliant scholarship demonstrates a simultaneous mastery of Chinese and Japanese languages, cultures, and histories. The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven should be of immediate interest to students in all those fields wishing to understand the multiple entanglements of imperialism, colonialism, ontology, and resistance that underlie the complex assemblage called climate change.” -- Arturo Escobar, author of * Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible *“Mark W. Driscoll's The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven is an ambitious and original study of Japanese and Chinese resistance to Euro-American imperialism. Beyond his compelling focus on race and racism—which rarely get the explicit attention they deserve in East Asian studies—Driscoll turns to Marxism, postcolonial theory, and ecocriticism to analyze global histories of extractive capitalism and drug production in this wide-ranging and thrilling analysis. There is no other book like this!” -- Teemu Ruskola, author of * Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law *“Driscoll’s The Whites are Enemies of Heaven is a timely intervention that injects new life into the study of imperialism with its richly detailed source materials and broad conceptual frames. The book is sure to inspire future work which will engage colonial histories through the lens of local eco ontological approaches.” -- Toulouse-Antonin Roy * positions politics *“Mark W. Driscoll’s The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven is an inspiring work.... Driscoll has written a brilliant work on the environmental, social, and economic history of East Asia.” -- Kenneth Kai-chung Yung * H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews *“Tightly argued and well-researched. . . . This work would be an excellent addition to reading lists for graduate students who are studying Postcolonialism and subaltern studies.” -- Barbara Greene * International Social Science Review *“Driscoll, like Weber, is an astute, well-read, and inventive synthesizer of a wide array of texts. . . . [The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven] is a complex and thought-provoking book.” -- Paul D. Barclay * Journal of Japanese Studies *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The Speed Race(r) and the Stopped, Incarce-Races xiii 1. J-hād against "Gorge-Us" White Men 47 2. Ecclesiastical Superpredators 85 Intertext I. White Dude's Burden (The Indifference That Makes a Difference) 131 3. Queer Parenting 137 4. Levelry and Revelry (Inside the Gelaohui Opium Room) 171 Intertext II. Madame Butterfly and "Negro Methods" in China 209 5. Last Samurai/First Extractive Capitalist 223 6. Blow (Opium Smoke) back: The Third War for Drugs in Sichuan 255 Conclusion. "Undermining" China and Beyond Climate Caucasianism 299 Notes 311 Bibliography 325 Index 353

    £80.75

  • Utopian Ruins

    Duke University Press Utopian Ruins

    Book SynopsisIn Utopian Ruins Jie Li traces the creation, preservation, and elision of memories about China''s Mao era by envisioning a virtual museum that reckons with both its utopian yearnings and its cataclysmic reverberations. Li proposes a critical framework for understanding the documentation and transmission of the socialist past that mediates between nostalgia and trauma, anticipation and retrospection, propaganda and testimony. Assembling each chapter like a memorial exhibit, Li explores how corporeal traces, archival documents, camera images, and material relics serve as commemorative media. Prison writings and police files reveal the infrastructure of state surveillance and testify to revolutionary ideals and violence, victimhood and complicity. Photojournalism from the Great Leap Forward and documentaries from the Cultural Revolution promoted faith in communist miracles while excluding darker realities, whereas Mao memorabilia collections, factory ruins, and memorials at trauma Trade Review“The memory palaces of contemporary China are akin to a necropolis, one built atop a storied tenement. Within those virtual walls lost souls, dead dreams, frustrated ambitions, and reanimated specters continuously jostle; variously they haunt the living. Jie Li is a learned docent with an assured demeanor who guides us through the hidden passages and dark corridors of that labyrinthine structure with the judicious balance of a historian and the craft of a curator. Her navigation also confronts us with an imagined future in which the contentious possibilities and conflicted potentials of the past will inevitably be visited, and revisited, as China continues its titanic, two-century-long quest on the path to modernity.” -- Geremie R. Barmé, editor of * China Heritage *“Utopian Ruins presents a creative and nuanced approach to memories of the Maoist era and their various mediations, bringing together a remarkably diverse set of archives, including police dossiers, photography, films, and physical spaces. The questions that Jie Li raises are as vital for global history as they are for China, since socialism's demise leaves many around the world puzzled about the legacies of that period, how to remember them, and what to build in their place.” -- Lisa Rofel, coauthor of * Fabricating Transnational Capitalism: A Collaborative Ethnography of Italian-Chinese Global Fashion *“This is a wonderful and important book. Important not only because of its nuanced readings of Mao era artifacts and their post-Mao remediation, but because it points in practical ways to possibilities for remembering the Maoist past.” -- Kirk A. Denton * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *“Utopian Ruins is an exceptional addition to the ever-growing scholarship on memory of and in the People’s Republic of China.... Jie Li creates space for a multivocality of voices in a thought-provoking study that is as impressive in scope as it is deep in meaning.” -- Damian Mandzunowski * PRC History Review *“Utopian Ruins presents multilayered, pluralistic interpretations and representations of the Mao era.... This book is beautifully written and rich with sophisticated analysis.” -- Di Luo * Twentieth-Century China *“Both for its poignant insights and blended methodologies and for its get-down-on-one’s-knees search-and-rescue operations, Utopian Ruins will be treasured by scholars and lay readers alike.” -- Haiyan Lee * Journal of Asian Studies *“Jie Li shows that a lively engagement with critical theory need not be either obfuscating or abstract. She hones in on the productive questions of knowledge production, meaning making, and power, drawing from notable theorists and previous studies to illuminate and make comparable her conclusions.” -- Timothy Cheek * American Historical Review *“Jie Li specializes in the media and literature of Mao-era China, and in this book each of the first five chapters easily stand alone as academic studies of prison writings, dossiers, films, and photographs. Bound together they form an insightful . . . commentary on the history and legacy of the Mao era. -- James Flath * The Public Historian *“Utopian Ruins exemplifies a model of scholarship that seamlessly interconnects solid archival digging, informed theoretical guidance, and holistic yet nuanced in-depth analysis. . . . As a courageous pioneering act of resisting the massive amnesia of insurmountable loss throughout the Mao era, Utopian Ruins paves a new direction for curators to design their future exhibitions of what Mao’s China was like.” -- Enhua Zhang * Prism *Table of ContentsSeries Editor's Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. Mediating Memories of the Mao Era 1 1. Blood Testament 25 2. Surveillance Files 68 3. Utopian Photographs 100 4. Foreign Lenses 150 5. Factory Rubble 192 6. Museums and Memorials 227 Epilogue. Notes for Future Curators 261 Notes 277 Bibliography 321 Index

    £112.20

  • Warring Visions

    Duke University Press Warring Visions

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn Warring Visions, Thy Phu explores photography from dispersed communities throughout Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora, both during and after the Vietnam War, to complicate narratives of conflict and memory. While the visual history of the Vietnam War has been dominated by American documentaries and war photography, Phu turns to photographs circulated by the Vietnamese themselves, capturing a range of subjects, occasions, and perspectives. Phu''s concept of warring visions refers to contrasts in the use of war photos in North Vietnam, which highlighted national liberation and aligned themselves with an international audience, and those in South Vietnam, which focused on family and everyday survival. Phu also uses warring visions to enlarge the category of war photography, a genre that usually consists of images illustrating the immediacy of combat and the spectacle of violence, pain, and wounded bodies. She pushes this genre beyond such definitions by analyzing pictures of fTrade Review“Thy Phu presents a searing and moving lesson in unlearning US imperialism and its entanglement with photography. Through diverse visual archives, she brilliantly shakes core assumptions about photography and war, including the ‘Vietnam War’—actually an ‘American war’ in Vietnam—and what came to be its iconic photographs and overlooked images. Phu's careful work of upsetting imperial geographies and imaginaries of the Cold War (such as North/South) brings that war back home to the South Vietnamese diaspora in a way that presciently speaks to the current moment.” -- Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, author of * Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism *"In this elegant and insightful study, Thy Phu turns to Vietnamese photographers, considering journalistic work, personal and family photos, reenactments, and artistic uses, all with the intent of exploring how Vietnamese people saw themselves and each other through the lens. From the homeland to the diaspora and back, she shows the power of photography to mobilize nations and communities, commemorate loss and absence, and provoke solidarity. What Phu finally shows, so powerfully and persuasively, is that Vietnamese people have always seen and been seen by themselves if not by others.” -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of * The Sympathizer *"Intriguing. . . . [Phu] is an elegant, accomplished writer. . . ." -- Thomas A. Bass * Mekong Review *"Warring Visions ... provokes a reevaluation of war photography, of socialist visuality, of memory, loss and diaspora. Reading it has not displaced the lasting power of the image of Kim Phuc from my visual memory, but it has made me think anew about what the stubborn persistence of this image has rendered invisible." -- Hirsch, Marianne * Canadian Literature *"Warring Visions is an effective examination of the multifarious ways that the tool of photography signifies. . . . Valuable for anyone interested in visual culture, archival studies, and diasporic identity against the grain of Western visions of imperialism." -- Collin Hawley * Lateral *"Phu’s book . . . has tremendous importance as a pioneering study of the visual archive produced through national struggle in North and South Vietnam. In fact, I contend that Warring Visions is essential reading for anyone interested in the war and its influence on visual culture." -- Meghan Tibbits-Lamirande * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Note on Language ix Warring Visions: Introduction 1 Part I. Socialist Ways of Seeing Vietnam 1. Aesthetic Form, Political Content 31 2. Revolutionary Vietnamese Women, Symbols of Solidarity 83 Part II. Refractions 3. Reenactment and Remembrance 121 4. Unhomed: Domestic Images and the Diasporic Art of Recollection 147 Epilogue: Visual Reunion 187 Notes 195 Bibliography 213 Index 227

    10 in stock

    £72.25

  • Return Engagements

    Duke University Press Return Engagements

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisVi?t Lê examines contemporary art in Cambodia and Vi?t Nam to trace the entwinement of militarization, trauma, diaspora, and modernity in Southeast Asian art.Trade Review“Việt Lê writes with flair and passion of difficult subjects: war, trauma, the art and visual culture of the Vietnamese and Cambodian diasporas. With a critic's nuanced eye and a practitioner's sensitivity, his framings and readings of provocative, complicated work evoke the beauty of the artists' visions and yet always return us to the history and the present of the artists' lives, careers, and countries. Return Engagements is a brilliant work to which I will return.” -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of * The Sympathizer *“Việt Lê moves the scholarly conversation about displacement away from the traditional state boundaries toward a much-needed examination of diaspora, (un)settlement, and return while offering a capacious rethinking of refugee-ness, displaced personhood, and diasporic selfhood. Return Engagements is a provocative and compelling work of curatorially driven art criticism.” -- Cathy Schlund-Vials, author of * War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work *"In this elegantly produced study of contemporary art in Cambodia and Vietnam, Việt Lê explores the multiple valences of return—as a yield that is more than financial, a journey that is deeply personal and a recurrence of history that is multi-temporal." -- Penny Edwards * Sojourn *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xxi Introduction. Risky Returns, Restagings, and Revolution 1 1. What Remains: Silence, Confrontation, and Traumatic Memory 57 2. The Art Part: Việtt Kiều Artists, Divides and Desires in Sài Gòn 105 3. Personal and Public Archives: Fragments and (Post)Colonial Memory 150 4. Town and Country: Sopheap Pich's and Phan Quang's Urban-Rural Developments 189 Epilogue. Leaving and Returns 239 Notes 245 Bibliography 301 Index 315

    1 in stock

    £75.65

  • Coed Revolution

    Duke University Press Coed Revolution

    Book SynopsisIn the 1960s, a new generation of university-educated youth in Japan challenged forms of capitalism and the state. In Coed Revolution Chelsea Szendi Schieder recounts the crucial stories of Japanese women''s participation in these protest movements led by the New Left through the early 1970s. Women were involved in contentious politics to an unprecedented degree, but they and their concerns were frequently marginalized by men in the movement and the mass media, and the movement at large is often memorialized as male and masculine. Drawing on stories of individual women, Schieder outlines how the media and other activists portrayed these women as icons of vulnerability and victims of violence, making women central to discourses about legitimate forms of postwar political expression. Schieder disentangles the gendered patterns that obscured radical women''s voices to construct a feminist genealogy of the Japanese New Left, demonstrating that student activism in 1960s Japan cannot Trade Review“Coed Revolution is a fascinating study of the role and representation of female student activists in the Japanese New Left. Chelsea Szendi Schieder examines the lives and writings of women who were forgotten and misrepresented, both by media sources of that time and by contemporary scholars. This is an important contribution to the study of gender and revolutionary activism during the global 1960s.” -- Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, author of * Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era *“Coed Revolution offers new insights into a crucial dimension of 1960s contentions in Japan through a nuanced examination of both the experience and representation of women in activism during this period. Chelsea Szendi Schieder brings out the stakes in reconceiving this history within a global frame in terms that will make her detailed analysis resonate for a wide range of readers. An important work.” -- William Marotti, author of * Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan *"An approachable, fascinating study, Coed Revolution provides important scholarship on gender and politics in post-war Japan and the role media plays in spinning narratives that shape public opinion.… One hopes Coed Revolution may inspire an English-language anthology of the women's writing for further study." -- Jan Bardsley * Journal of Contemporary Asia *"Coed Revolution demonstrates how the practice of citation is political and meaningful beyond its scholarly significance. . . . Such a vital re-framing could alter the ways existing citational practices replicate liberal interpretations of anti-state violence as illegitimate and support counterinsurgency and policing in conjunction with academic discourse." -- Setsu Shigematsu * The Sixties *"Coed Revolution is a must-read for students and scholars of women’s activism; local, national, and global New Left movements in the 1960s and early 1970s. . . . We should shift our historiographical view lest we erase the role of women in the New Left. Women were oppressed by the glorification of masculinity but were not exclusively victims. Schieder’s book reclaims their voices and their role in a critical era of Japanese history." -- Barbara Molony * Journal of Contemporary History *"By focusing on female students in New Left protest during the 'long decade' of the 1960s, Schieder has made a strong case for the particular impact of mass media coverage in marginalizing the important role that coeds played in the protests. Her book is a significant addition to studies both of protest in this period and of the connection between the New Left and second-wave feminism in Japan." -- Patricia Steinhoff * Monumenta Nipponica *"A fascinating deep dive into the gendered structures of student activism in 1960s Japan. . . . A unique examination of the intersection of middle class subjectivity and radical politics." -- Christopher Gerteis * Journal of Japanese Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Gendering the New Japanese Left 1 1. Naive Politics: A Maiden Sacrifice for Postwar Democracy 21 2. "My Love and Rebellion": The Politics of Nurturing, the Logic of Capital, and the Rationalization of Coeducation 49 3. Is the Personal Political? Everyday Life as a Site of Struggle in the Campus New Left 78 4. "When You Fuck a Vanguard Girl . . .": The Spectacle of New Left Masculinity 104 5. "Gewalt Rosas": The Creation of the Terrifying, Titillating Female Student Activist 132 Conclusion: Revolutionary Desire 158 Notes 169 Bibliography 191 Index 205

    £72.25

  • The Stone and the Wireless

    Duke University Press The Stone and the Wireless

    Book SynopsisIn the final decades of the Manchu Qing dynasty in China, technologies such as the phonograph, telephone, telegraph, and photography were both new and foreign. In The Stone and the Wireless Shaoling Ma analyzes diplomatic diaries, early science fiction, feminist poetry, photography, telegrams, and other archival texts, and shows how writers, intellectuals, reformers, and revolutionaries theorized what media does despite lacking a vocabulary to do so. Media defines the dynamics between technologies and their social or cultural forms, between devices or communicative processes and their representations in texts and images. More than simply reexamining late Qing China''s political upheavals and modernizing energies through the lens of media, Ma shows that a new culture of mediation was helping to shape the very distinctions between politics, gender dynamics, economics, and science and technology. Ma contends that mediation lies not only at the heart of Chinese media history but of Trade Review“The beauty of Shaoling Ma's inspiring and provocative argument is that it allows for a reconsideration of late Qing culture through a new prism and for the expansion of mediality beyond the familiar confines of Western culture. Offering fresh readings and giving new life to key texts in modern Chinese history and literature, Ma makes an intervention that will force the field of Chinese studies to reassess its methodology and fundamental assumptions.” -- Yomi Braester, author of * Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract *“From late Qing texts and media studies to Marxist criticism and affect theory, The Stone and the Wireless combines different archives, discourses, and theoretical registers in new and exciting ways. This innovative, rich, and intellectually engaging work will appeal to those in Chinese studies and media studies more broadly.” -- Andrea Bachner, author of * The Mark of Theory: Inscriptive Figures, Poststructuralist Prehistories *"Scholars and graduate students interested in global media cultures and media theory will find The Stone and the Wireless a valuable addition to the North American and Western European canon of media theory. This book not only challenges the predominant emphasis on forms and objects, but also constructs a complex web of mediation through its narrative. Chinese notions, texts, and historical contexts serve as the subjects of discussion, not the backdrop. For scholars of world literature, comparative literature, and science fiction, the book offers close readings of untranslated and understudied sources." -- Xuenan Cao * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *"Connecting history, theory, and area studies, The Stone and the Wireless makes contributions to many fields, including media studies, literary criticism, and cultural studies. It introduces new sources to the study of media history and science fiction history in China. It also provides valuable insights and fresh materials to the global history of technology by investigating the circulation of technical knowledge between new areas and regions." -- Yue Zhao * H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews *"The Stone and the Wireless . . . sets an important example for readership in and beyond the China field that sources such as Guo’s diplomatic diaries and newspaper photojournalism have immense interdisciplinary potential. Using media theory methods, these objects of historical interest can exist within area-specific history and form part of generative, ongoing debates surrounding media and media technology." -- Alina Scotti * Technology and Culture *"Scholars in gender studies and labor history will also be inspired by its discussion of gendered subjectivity and the working masses in Chinese literature. Since our current era is marked by the widespread popularity and significant influence of Artificial Intelligence, general readers will find the debates surrounding the capacity of machines to replicate human cognition and language during the late Qing era very relevant as well." -- Yu Liu * Asian Ethnicity *"Ma’s book is a valuable addition to the growing literature on media in Chinese history. Her focus on the late Qing period, instead of the republican era, is especially worthy of praise. The Stone and the Wireless opens an intellectual space to think about mediation and ponder its strengths and weaknesses as a method. It will be an essential read for Chinese media studies going forward." -- Ulug Kuzuoglu * Cultural Politics *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. The Forms of Media 1 Part I. Jl | Recordings 1. Guo Songtao's Phonograph: The Politics and Aesthetics of Real and Imagined Media 37 2. Stone, Copy, Medium: "Tidbits of Writing" and "Official Documents" in New Story of the Stone (1905–1906) 74 Part II. Chuan/Zhuan | Transmissions 3. Lyrical Media: Technology, Sentimentality, and Bad Models of the Feeling Woman 111 Part III. Tong | Interconnectivity 4. 1900: Infrastructural Emergencies of Telegraphic Proportions 149 5. A Medium to End All Media: "New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio" and the Social Brain of Industry and Intellect 181 Conclusion: Stone, Woman, Wireless 207 Notes 219 Bibliography 261 Index 285

    £75.65

  • Bombay Brokers

    Duke University Press Bombay Brokers

    Book SynopsisBombay Brokers collect thirty-six character profiles of men and women whose knowledge and laborwhich is often seen as morally suspectare essential for navigating everyday life in Bombay, one of the world's most complex, dynamic, and populous cities.Trade Review“Lisa Björkman's collection Bombay Brokers offers a brilliantly multivocal account of the many worlds of practical negotiation and embodied expertise that animate urban life in one of India's most dynamic, polarized cities. Just as important, it is a remarkable work of collaborative ethnography that forges a distinctive methodological strategy through which to illuminate the crises and contradictions of contemporary urbanism in Bombay and beyond.” -- Neil Brenner, Urban Theory Lab, University of Chicago“This remarkable edited collection is a commendable contribution to the study of the links between mediation and intermediation, thus linking a venerable tradition of political anthropology with vivid portraits of the agency of brokers. It brings Bombay to life in ways that will surely inform the comparative study of fixers in other large cities caught in the flux of globalization.” -- Arjun Appadurai, Paulette Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University"An unconventional introduction to India's biggest city and an invitation to the joys and challenges of ethnography." -- Andrew J. Nathan * Foreign Affairs *“While [Bombay Brokers] is nominally about the city of Mumbai, there is little doubt that it will resonate with anyone interested in the story of urban change and continuity all around the world. It is a distinctive contribution to the literature on cities and labour and one that is bound to inspire similar books in years to come.” -- Sneha Annavarapu * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research *“[Bombay Brokers] is a highly engaging read, as well as a rich and very valuable contribution to the literatures about Mumbai and the concept of brokerage.... The book provides food for thought for debates about the specificity of Southern urbanisms and enriches our conceptual vocabulary for thinking about cities.” -- Pablo Holwitt * Antipode *“[Bombay Brokers] is a book that, in its combination of sharp-eyed detail and endlessly multiplying perspectives, manages to create a simulacrum of the city itself in all its plurality and vitality. . . . The structure of the book makes it especially useful as a teaching resource.” -- Jonathan Spencer * Journal of Anthropological Research *“Bombay Brokers is an expert exploration of how life is fashioned in a harshly hierarchical city through the activities of individuals—creative, complex, tenacious individuals who accomplish survival, success or profit, sometimes space to build a community, by brokering deals and mediating conflicts between messy, overflowing institutions.” -- Tania Bhattacharyya * Journal of Asian Studies *"Bombay Brokers is ideal for teaching. One could easily assign a single chapter, thematic domain, or the whole. The book’s careful interventions on theories of value, politics, urban belonging, and place making will invigorate advanced students as well as professional anthropologists and urban planners, while individual chapters would be ideal for teaching introductory courses on cultural anthropology, urbanism, or South Asia. This imminently readable and teachable volume burgeons with insights and new research avenues for people thinking about and living in cities in South Asia and beyond." -- Andrew McDowell * City & Society *"It should be read widely. An ambitious project like this is rarely produced, or even attempted, and rarely with this consistent level of craftsmanship and shared vision start to finish. The style and length of the chapters, short and lacking pretense and jargon, make it an ideal complement to more densely theoretical tracts in undergraduate and graduate courses on urban politics and development in South Asia and the global South. The book is also a model of collaborative inquiry." -- Patrick Inglis * Contemporary Sociology *“Bombay Brokers deserves to be read and engaged with by scholars across anthropology, political science, history, and critical area studies. … [It] vividly captures the art of ethnographic writing and the ends to which it can be mobilized.” -- Amogh Dhar Sharma * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments viii Introduction. Ethnography in the Global Interregnum / Lisa Björkman 1 Part I. Development / Rachel Sturman 47 1. Bunty: Singh Builder of Dreams / Lalitha Kamath 59 2. Imran: Housing Contractor / Tobias Baitsch 68 3. Dalpat: Manager of Services / Lisa Björkman 78 4. Mehmoodbhai: Toilet Operator / Prasad Khanolkar 87 5. Kaushal: Land Agglomerator / Llerena Guiu Searle 95 6. Janu: Sister-Supervisor of Migrant Construction Workers / Uday Chandra 101 Part II. Property. Lisa Björkman 109 7. Dr. K: Middle-Class Social Worker / Yaffa Truelove 121 8. Ashok Ravat: Shivaji Park's Sentinel / Lalit Vachani 128 9. Shazia: Proof Maker / Sangeeta Banerji 137 10. Nirmala: Kamathipura's Gatekeeper / Ratoola Kunda 145 11. Farhad: "Sue Maker" / Leilah Vevaina 154 Part III. Business / Tarini Bedi 163 12. Ramita: Surrogacy Agent / Daisy Deomampo 175 13. Muhammad: Revalorizer of E-Waste / Aneri Taskar 182 14. Deepak: Making Mumbai (in China) / Ka-Kin Cheuk 191 15. Lubaina: Framing "Development" / Lubaina Rangwala 199 16. Shankar: Delivering Authenticity / Ken Kuroda 208 17. Manal-Muna: Cooking Up Value / Tarini Bedi 216 18. Ramji: Business Energizer / Lisa Björkman 224 Part IV. Difference / Anjali Arondekar 233 19. Bhimsen Gaikwad: Singer of Justice / Shailaja Paik 243 20. Sultan: Image Manager / David J. Strohl 253 21. Raj: Carting Cosmopolitanism / Maura Finkelstein 262 22. Laxmi: Dealer in Emotion / R. Swaminathan 270 23. Dharamsey: Assembler of Tradition / Edward Simpson 278 24. Dalvi: Speaker of Cities / Gautam Pemmaraju 286 Part V. Publics / Lisa Björkman and Michael Collins 297 25. Shashi: Dot Connector / Rohan Shivkumar 307 26. Anil Prakash: Amplifier of Cinema-Industrial Connections / Kathryn Hardy 315 27. Gauravpant Mishra: Crowd Maker / Sarthak Bagchi 322 28. Srinivasan: Kingmaker / Simon Chauchard 329 29. Madhu: Door Opener / Bhushan Korgaonkar 337 30. Poornima: Designing Relations / Ajay Gandhi 347 Part VI. Truth / Lisa Björkman 355 31. Rajani Pandit: Detector of "Truths" / Srimati Basu 367 32. Afzal Taximan: Rumor Navigator / Sahana Udupa 378 33. Pawan: Prison Master / Atreyee Sen 384 34. Sujit: Master Communicator / Annelies Kusters 391 35. Chadda: Report Maker / Prasad Shetty & Rupali Gupte 401 36. Prakash: Data Entrepreneur / Amita Bhide 405 Conclusion. Other Places, Other Times / Lisa Mitchell 414 Glossary 425 About the Contributors 437 Index 441

    £84.15

  • City of Screens

    Duke University Press City of Screens

    Book SynopsisJasmine Nadua Trice examines the politics of cinema circulation in early-2000s Manila, showing how the rising independent Philippine cinema movement has been a site of contestation between filmmakers and the state, each constructing different notions of a prospective, national public film audience.Trade Review“From the pirate video stalls of the old city center to the shopping mall multiplexes of Manila, Jasmine Nadua Trice examines the fragmented and multifaceted assemblage of alternative Philippine cinema. Her passionate attention to detail and wide-ranging engagement with critical theory provide a compelling model for the study of cinema cultures in the global South.” -- Michael Curtin, Distinguished Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara“Jasmine Nadua Trice persuasively argues that film circulation both envisions and occasionally actualizes the dream of a national film audience for counterdominant cinema in the Philippines. She confronts head-on one of the thorniest problems of politically or aesthetically progressive Philippine film: filmmakers’ attempts to reach the alienated domestic moviegoer. Her fresh, syncretic approach and elegant thinking make City of Screens a groundbreaking, must-read book not only for readers not only interested in Philippine cinema but also for those attuned to the dynamics of distribution, exhibition, and circulation beyond Hollywood. Representing a wholly original and highly generative departure from previous scholarship, City of Screens is a major intervention.” -- Bliss Cua Lim, author of * Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique *"Overall, there are a number of themes to appreciate in City of Screens, especially if one is not familiar with local independent cinema and its circuits of distribution. The book’s contribution also lies in its use of interdisciplinarity, applying rhetoric, urban studies, geography, and anthropology to explain why alternative cinema remains limited in its circulation. . . . The book’s most poignant yet most grounded point may be Trice’s assertion that the formation of alternative film culture and speculative publics will remain an asymptotic process—never being fully finished but always within reach." -- Cherish Aileen A Brillon * Philippine Studies *"Trice displays a generosity to her marginalized objects of study by offering possible questions and connections instead of forcing predetermined approaches and interpretations. Her book is distinguished by its careful selection of less obvious examples, which are described and analyzed in rich language that yields compelling insights with every reading. . . . With its innovative methods and unexpected ideas, which distill the lost vibrancy of a transitional historical moment, this monograph will reverberate with readers yet to come." -- Elmo Gonzaga * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Revanchist Cinemas and Bad Audiences, Multiplex Fiestas and Ideal Publics 39 2. The Quiapo Cinematheque and Urban-Cinematic Authenticity 79 3. Alternative Exhibition and the Rhythms of the City 113 4. "Not for Public Exhibition": Cinema Regulation, Alternative Cinema, and a Rational Body Politic 153 5. "Hollywood Is Not Us": National Circulation and the Speculative State 189 Epilogue 230 Notes 241 Bibliography 281 Index 299

    £75.65

  • Sound Alignments

    Duke University Press Sound Alignments

    Book SynopsisThe contributors to Sound Alignments explore the myriad forms of popular music in Asia during the Cold War, showing how it took on new meanings and significance as it traveled across the region and forged and challenged alliances, revolutions, and countercultures.Trade Review“With this vital addition to the growing literature in global music studies, the contributors to Sound Alignments reveal the vernacular cosmopolitanism of Asian popular music as a crucial dimension of Cold War cultural politics, nationalist policies, and internationalist rhetorics. An essential mapping of sonic history and musical mediation.” -- David Novak, author of * Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation *“Giving readers a happily cacophonous remapping of the sounds of the Cold War, Sound Alignments is an intellectually stimulating and multidimensional contribution to the study of twentieth-century popular music and the global culture of the Cold War.” -- Andrew F. Jones, author of * Circuit Listening: Chinese Popular Music in the Global 1960s *"Sound Alignments deserves recognition for tackling the 'mutually entangled structures' produced by the 'processes of imperialization, colonization, and the cold war' that have shaped an imaginary Asia (p. 212). . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -- T. S. Yamada * Choice *“[Sound Alignments] is a highly informative and intellectually stimulating book.” -- CedarBough T. Saeji * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction / Michael Bourdaghs, Paola Iovene, and Kaley Mason 1 Part I. Routes 1. Musical Travels of the Coconut Isles and the Socialist Popular / Jennifer Lindsay 43 2. Vehicles of Progress: The Kerala Rikshawala at the Intersection of Communism and Social Realism / Nisha Kommattam 69 3. East Asian Pop Music and an Incomplete Regional Contemporary / C.J. W.-L. Wee 93 Part II. Covers 4. Searching for Youth, the People (Minjung), and "Another" West While Living Through Anti-Communist Cold War Politics: South Korean "Folk Song" in the 1970s / Hyunjoon Shin 131 5. Cosmopolitanism, Vernacular Cosmopolitanism, and Sound Alignments: Covers and Cantonese Cover Songs in 1960s Hong Kong / Hon-Lun Yang 153 Part III. Fronts 6. Sonic Imaginaries of Okinawa: Daiku Tetsuhiro's Cosmopolitan "Paradise" / Marié Abe 173 7. Cosmaharaja: Popular Songs of Socialist Cosmopolitanism in Cold War India / Anna Schultz 201 8. Yellow Music Criticism during China's Anti-Rightest Campaign / Qian Zhang 231 Afterword: Asia's Soundings of the Cold War / Christine R. Yano 249 Bibliography 263 Contributors 285 Index 289

    £75.65

  • Return Engagements

    Duke University Press Return Engagements

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisViệt Lê examines contemporary art in Cambodia and Việt Nam to trace the entwinement of militarization, trauma, diaspora, and modernity in Southeast Asian art.Trade Review“Việt Lê writes with flair and passion of difficult subjects: war, trauma, the art and visual culture of the Vietnamese and Cambodian diasporas. With a critic's nuanced eye and a practitioner's sensitivity, his framings and readings of provocative, complicated work evoke the beauty of the artists' visions and yet always return us to the history and the present of the artists' lives, careers, and countries. Return Engagements is a brilliant work to which I will return.” -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of * The Sympathizer *“Việt Lê moves the scholarly conversation about displacement away from the traditional state boundaries toward a much-needed examination of diaspora, (un)settlement, and return while offering a capacious rethinking of refugee-ness, displaced personhood, and diasporic selfhood. Return Engagements is a provocative and compelling work of curatorially driven art criticism.” -- Cathy Schlund-Vials, author of * War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work *"In this elegantly produced study of contemporary art in Cambodia and Vietnam, Việt Lê explores the multiple valences of return—as a yield that is more than financial, a journey that is deeply personal and a recurrence of history that is multi-temporal." -- Penny Edwards * Sojourn *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xxi Introduction. Risky Returns, Restagings, and Revolution 1 1. What Remains: Silence, Confrontation, and Traumatic Memory 57 2. The Art Part: Việtt Kiều Artists, Divides and Desires in Sài Gòn 105 3. Personal and Public Archives: Fragments and (Post)Colonial Memory 150 4. Town and Country: Sopheap Pich's and Phan Quang's Urban-Rural Developments 189 Epilogue. Leaving and Returns 239 Notes 245 Bibliography 301 Index 315

    1 in stock

    £21.59

  • Revisiting Womens Cinema

    Duke University Press Revisiting Womens Cinema

    Book SynopsisIn Revisiting Women’s Cinema, Lingzhen Wang ponders the roots of contemporary feminist stagnation and the limits of both commercial mainstream and elite minor cultures by turning to socialist women filmmakers in modern China. She foregrounds their sociopolitical engagements, critical interventions, and popular artistic experiments, offering a new conception of socialist and postsocialist feminisms, mainstream culture, and women’s cinema. Wang highlights the films of Wang Ping and Dong Kena in the 1950s and 1960s and Zhang Nuanxin and Huang Shuqin in the 1980s and 1990s to unveil how they have been profoundly misread through extant research paradigms entrenched in Western Cold War ideology, post-second-wave cultural feminism, and post-Mao intellectual discourses. Challenging received interpretations, she elucidates how socialist feminism and culture were conceptualized and practiced in relation to China’s search not only for national independence and economic deTrade Review“Insisting we hear, listen, and see the voices and actions of women filmmakers in China, Lingzhen Wang provides a nuanced examination of women's cinema and feminism that attends to national and transnational trajectories. She develops theoretically sophisticated and politically incisive critiques of how dominant frameworks in socialist China and throughout the world configured the realms of possibility for making, seeing, and recognizing socialist and Chinese women's mainstream film. An exciting, innovative, and theoretically rich project.” -- Tina Mai Chen, coeditor of * Film, History, and Cultural Citizenship: Sites of Production *“Lingzhen Wang is the first Chinese scholar writing in English to point out the eerie parallels between post-Mao feminism and post-second-wave Anglo-European feminism as she negotiates the political legacies of two cultures, illuminating the traditions of the one for the other. Revisiting Women's Cinema is likely to rock the history of world cinema and inspire a resurgence of interest in the project of globalizing feminist film and media theory. I can think of no other book on feminism and motion picture film history that is more important to the field than this one.” -- Jane Gaines, Professor of Film, Columbia University"Revisiting Women’s Cinema is a rich and thought-provoking revisionist account of Chinese women’s cinema. . . . In addition to reinvigorating feminist theory, the book opens up new avenues for exploring the interaction of the political and the aesthetic, the mainstream and the experimental in Chinese cinema." -- Xiaoning Lu * The China Quarterly *

    £20.69

  • China in the World

    Duke University Press China in the World

    Book SynopsisIn China in the World, Ban Wang traces the evolution of modern China from the late nineteenth century to the present. With a focus on tensions and connections between national formation and international outlooks, Wang shows how ancient visions persist even as China has adopted and revised the Western nation-state form. The concept of tianxia, meaning “all under heaven,” has constantly been updated into modern outlooks that value unity, equality, and reciprocity as key to overcoming interstate conflict, social fragmentation, and ethnic divides. Instead of geopolitical dominance, China’s worldviews stem as much from the age-old desire for world unity as from absorbing the Western ideas of the Enlightenment, humanism, and socialism. Examining political writings, literature, and film, Wang presents a narrative of the country’s pursuits of decolonization, national independence, notions of national form, socialist internationalism, alternative development, andTrade Review“What is China? How can the Chinese experience be brought to bear on world modernities? In China in the World, Ban Wang compellingly explores the rise and development of modern China in ever-changing cross-cultural contexts. It is an overarching engagement with the issues of self-perception, cultural representation, and transnational communication through the mediums of literature, cinema, and political treatise.” -- David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature, Harvard University“China in the World is an exceptional work in Chinese Studies. Ban Wang shifts focus to China’s place in the world and its imagination, presentation, and ideas for itself and the world. Wang’s wide vision, deep reading, and consistent conversation between history and reality shape the texture of this brilliant book.” -- Wang Hui, author of * China’s Twentieth Century: Revolution, Retreat, and the Road to Equality *"China in the World is an elegantly efficient volume. . . . I enjoyed reading the clearly articulated arguments and histories presented in China in the World, and I look forward to following the conversations it inspires." -- Julia Keblinska * Modern Chinese Culture and Literature *Table of ContentsSeries Editor's Foreword vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Empire, Nation, and World Vision 1 1. Morality and Global Vision in Kang Youwei's World Community 19 2. Nationalism, Moral Reform, and Tianxia in Liang Qichao 40 3. World Literature in the Mountains 59 4. Art, Politics, and Internationalism in Korean War Films 80 5. National Unity, Ethnicity, and Socialist Utopia in Five Golden Flowers 101 6. The Third World, Alternative Development, and Global Maoism 123 7. The Cold War, Depoliticization, and China in the American Classroom 148 8. Using the Past to Understand the Present 170 Notes 187 Bibliography 201 Index 211

    £18.89

  • Elementary Aspects of the Political

    Duke University Press Elementary Aspects of the Political

    Book SynopsisIn Elementary Aspects of the Political Prathama Banerjee moves beyond postcolonial and decolonial critiques of European political philosophy to rethink modern conceptions of 'the political' from the perspective of the global South. Drawing on Indian and Bengali practices and philosophies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Banerjee identifies four elements of the political: the self, action, the idea, and the people. She examines selfhood in light of precolonial Indic traditions of renunciation and realpolitik; action in the constitutive tension between traditional conceptions of karma and modern ideas of labor; the idea of equality as it emerges in the dialectic between spirituality and economics; and people in the friction between the structure of the political party and the atmospherics of fiction and theater. Throughout, Banerjee reasserts the historical specificity of political thought and challenges modern assumptions about the universality, primacy, anTrade Review“A brilliantly original study of the relation between philosophical ideas and political practice, this book by Prathama Banerjee explores how key ideas drawn from Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Western traditions have shaped the field of the political in India. While analyzing the complex and often ambiguous relations of the political with religion, economy, literature, theater, and art, she gives us many surprising new insights into such canonical thinkers as Bankim, Aurobindo, Gandhi, Iqbal, and Ambedkar.” -- Partha Chatterjee, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University“Simultaneously a contribution to history and to political theory, this insightful reading opens up a striking vantage point from which to explore the implications of the now-global concepts of political subjecthood, political action, political ideology, and "people." Prathama Banerjee's book exemplifies what it means when we say that postcolonial theory can redefine the very terms of political theory. In sum, this is a landmark work of immense originality and brilliance.” -- Ajay Skaria, author of * Unconditional Equality: Gandhi’s Religion of Resistance *“Elementary Aspects of the Political is not just about claiming or defining a non-European political theory, but aims to create new ways of thinking about politics.... Banerjee offers a framework that anyone interested in building political theory anew, regardless of regional expertise, may wish to consider.” -- Whitney Russell * PoLAR *“Banerjee provides a sophisticated contribution to long-standing debates regarding ‘the political’ that is grounded in histories from the Global South.... She shows the powerful aesthetic possibilities in political theorizing and acting across any number of borders that have traditionally delimited and reified particular conceptions of the political.” -- Stuart Gray * Perspectives on Politics *“There is much more to be said about this ambitious and erudite text. . . . By opening up the conceptual history of the political, Banerjee’s important book establishes itself as one that will be debated for a long time. It marks a new point of departure for thinking about the relations between postcolonial and decolonial history and philosophy.” -- Rochona Majumdar * History and Theory *“This extraordinarily nuanced book sets aside an older and rather tired trope of the critique of Eurocentric categories and embarks on a robust enterprise of generating a mode of thinking from the Global South. What is made clear throughout [Elementary Aspects of the Political] are the different genealogies, vocabularies, and histories that go into the thinking of the idea of ‘the political.’” -- Thomas Biebricher * Political Theory *

    £25.19

  • Hindutva as Political Monotheism

    Duke University Press Hindutva as Political Monotheism

    Book SynopsisIn Hindutva as Political Monotheism, Anustup Basu offers a genealogical study of Hindutva—Hindu right-wing nationalism—to illustrate the significance of Western anthropology and political theory to the idea of India as a Hindu nation. Connecting Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt''s notion of political theology to traditional theorems of Hindu sovereignty and nationhood, Basu demonstrates how Western and Indian theorists subsumed a vast array of polytheistic, pantheistic, and henotheistic cults featuring millions of gods into a singular edifice of faith. Basu exposes the purported “Hindu Nation” as itself an orientalist vision by analyzing three crucial moments: European anthropologists’ and Indian intellectuals’ invention of a unified Hinduism during the long nineteenth century; Indian ideologues’ adoption of ethnoreligious nationalism in pursuit of a single Hindu way of life in the twentieth century; and the transformations of this project in thTrade Review“Hindutva as Political Monotheism is an original, important book, brilliant in its juxtaposition of major strands of European Enlightenment thought and Indian nationalist thought.” -- Peter van der Veer, author of * The Value of Comparison *“A project of impressive intellectual scope and reach, based on erudition across a number of fields and archives. Hindutva as Political Monotheism is a much-awaited and timely study of Hindu nationalism that both extends the scope of well-worn historical terrain and reconfigures it through an utterly fresh conceptual lens. Given the present attempt to transform India’s democratic republic into a Hindu state, it could not have come at a more appropriate time. It will be an invaluable aid in understanding the contemporary situation in historical terms.” -- Aamir Mufti, author of * Forget English! Orientalisms and World Literatures *"A powerful, erudite, and timely study of the historical formations and contemporary manifestations of Hindu nationalism in India.... The laudable interdisciplinarity of the book and its rich archive of literature, film, and new media provide compelling and diverse entry points for a wide range of readers.” -- Manav Ratti * South Asian Review *“Basu’s monograph is a path-breaking attempt to trace [Hindutva’s] genealogy as a political monotheism.... Hindutva is an eclectic and multidimensional work that makes major interventions in multiple knowledge-fields.” -- Amit R. Baishya * Boundary 2 *“Anustup Basu’s monograph, Hindutva as Political Monotheism, presents a hitherto underutilized lens of analysis. The book extends the works of political theorist Carl Schmitt on the monotheistic imperative found in the European theorizations of religious and ethnocentric nationhood, to India’s history with ethnonationalism. . . . [It] does an excellent job of tracing [Hindutva’s] origins.” -- Iman Fathima Sheik Abdullah * Journal of Muslim Philanthropy & Civil Society *“Anustup Basu takes a researcher’s perspective and approaches the topic with academic rigor and passion, thereby contributing immensely to the study of the subject of Hindutva. . . . Elaborately designed, the text invites readers to delve deeper into the sociopolitical, religious, and cultural environment of contemporary India and with greater awareness address and encounter the fascistic structures of Hindutva 2.0.” -- Swapna Gopinath * Cultural Politics *"An original and erudite book, Hindutva as Political Monotheism is a tour de force in critical interpretation: it constructs an intellectual genealogy of Hindu religious philosophy, tracking its steady politicization from the late nineteenth century to the present-day." -- Bishnupriya Ghosh * Boundary 2 *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Questions Concerning the Hindu Political 11 2. The Hindu Nation as Organism 28 3. The Indian Monotheism 89 4. Hindutva 2.0 as Advertised Monotheism 150 Notes 209 Bibliography 251 Index

    £25.19

  • The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven

    Duke University Press The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven

    Book SynopsisMark W. Driscoll examines Western imperialism in East Asia throughout the nineteenth century and the devastating effects of what he calls climate caucasianismthe West's racialized pursuit of capital at the expense of people of color, women, and the environment.Trade Review“Mark W. Driscoll dazzlingly argues that at the origin of the Anthropocene lies the predatory behavior of European colonialism in East Asia—what he daringly terms "climate caucasianism", a historically unprecedented assemblage of extraction, coloniality, ecological devastation, commerce, and war. Driscoll's exquisite and brilliant scholarship demonstrates a simultaneous mastery of Chinese and Japanese languages, cultures, and histories. The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven should be of immediate interest to students in all those fields wishing to understand the multiple entanglements of imperialism, colonialism, ontology, and resistance that underlie the complex assemblage called climate change.” -- Arturo Escobar, author of * Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible *“Mark W. Driscoll's The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven is an ambitious and original study of Japanese and Chinese resistance to Euro-American imperialism. Beyond his compelling focus on race and racism—which rarely get the explicit attention they deserve in East Asian studies—Driscoll turns to Marxism, postcolonial theory, and ecocriticism to analyze global histories of extractive capitalism and drug production in this wide-ranging and thrilling analysis. There is no other book like this!” -- Teemu Ruskola, author of * Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law *“Driscoll’s The Whites are Enemies of Heaven is a timely intervention that injects new life into the study of imperialism with its richly detailed source materials and broad conceptual frames. The book is sure to inspire future work which will engage colonial histories through the lens of local eco ontological approaches.” -- Toulouse-Antonin Roy * positions politics *“Mark W. Driscoll’s The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven is an inspiring work.... Driscoll has written a brilliant work on the environmental, social, and economic history of East Asia.” -- Kenneth Kai-chung Yung * H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews *“Tightly argued and well-researched. . . . This work would be an excellent addition to reading lists for graduate students who are studying Postcolonialism and subaltern studies.” -- Barbara Greene * International Social Science Review *“Driscoll, like Weber, is an astute, well-read, and inventive synthesizer of a wide array of texts. . . . [The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven] is a complex and thought-provoking book.” -- Paul D. Barclay * Journal of Japanese Studies *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The Speed Race(r) and the Stopped, Incarce-Races xiii 1. J-hād against "Gorge-Us" White Men 47 2. Ecclesiastical Superpredators 85 Intertext I. White Dude's Burden (The Indifference That Makes a Difference) 131 3. Queer Parenting 137 4. Levelry and Revelry (Inside the Gelaohui Opium Room) 171 Intertext II. Madame Butterfly and "Negro Methods" in China 209 5. Last Samurai/First Extractive Capitalist 223 6. Blow (Opium Smoke) back: The Third War for Drugs in Sichuan 255 Conclusion. "Undermining" China and Beyond Climate Caucasianism 299 Notes 311 Bibliography 325 Index 353

    £22.79

  • Utopian Ruins

    Duke University Press Utopian Ruins

    Book SynopsisIn Utopian Ruins Jie Li traces the creation, preservation, and elision of memories about China''s Mao era by envisioning a virtual museum that reckons with both its utopian yearnings and its cataclysmic reverberations. Li proposes a critical framework for understanding the documentation and transmission of the socialist past that mediates between nostalgia and trauma, anticipation and retrospection, propaganda and testimony. Assembling each chapter like a memorial exhibit, Li explores how corporeal traces, archival documents, camera images, and material relics serve as commemorative media. Prison writings and police files reveal the infrastructure of state surveillance and testify to revolutionary ideals and violence, victimhood and complicity. Photojournalism from the Great Leap Forward and documentaries from the Cultural Revolution promoted faith in communist miracles while excluding darker realities, whereas Mao memorabilia collections, factory ruins, and memorials at trauma Trade Review“The memory palaces of contemporary China are akin to a necropolis, one built atop a storied tenement. Within those virtual walls lost souls, dead dreams, frustrated ambitions, and reanimated specters continuously jostle; variously they haunt the living. Jie Li is a learned docent with an assured demeanor who guides us through the hidden passages and dark corridors of that labyrinthine structure with the judicious balance of a historian and the craft of a curator. Her navigation also confronts us with an imagined future in which the contentious possibilities and conflicted potentials of the past will inevitably be visited, and revisited, as China continues its titanic, two-century-long quest on the path to modernity.” -- Geremie R. Barmé, editor of * China Heritage *“Utopian Ruins presents a creative and nuanced approach to memories of the Maoist era and their various mediations, bringing together a remarkably diverse set of archives, including police dossiers, photography, films, and physical spaces. The questions that Jie Li raises are as vital for global history as they are for China, since socialism's demise leaves many around the world puzzled about the legacies of that period, how to remember them, and what to build in their place.” -- Lisa Rofel, coauthor of * Fabricating Transnational Capitalism: A Collaborative Ethnography of Italian-Chinese Global Fashion *“This is a wonderful and important book. Important not only because of its nuanced readings of Mao era artifacts and their post-Mao remediation, but because it points in practical ways to possibilities for remembering the Maoist past.” -- Kirk A. Denton * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *“Utopian Ruins is an exceptional addition to the ever-growing scholarship on memory of and in the People’s Republic of China.... Jie Li creates space for a multivocality of voices in a thought-provoking study that is as impressive in scope as it is deep in meaning.” -- Damian Mandzunowski * PRC History Review *“Utopian Ruins presents multilayered, pluralistic interpretations and representations of the Mao era.... This book is beautifully written and rich with sophisticated analysis.” -- Di Luo * Twentieth-Century China *“Both for its poignant insights and blended methodologies and for its get-down-on-one’s-knees search-and-rescue operations, Utopian Ruins will be treasured by scholars and lay readers alike.” -- Haiyan Lee * Journal of Asian Studies *“Jie Li shows that a lively engagement with critical theory need not be either obfuscating or abstract. She hones in on the productive questions of knowledge production, meaning making, and power, drawing from notable theorists and previous studies to illuminate and make comparable her conclusions.” -- Timothy Cheek * American Historical Review *“Jie Li specializes in the media and literature of Mao-era China, and in this book each of the first five chapters easily stand alone as academic studies of prison writings, dossiers, films, and photographs. Bound together they form an insightful . . . commentary on the history and legacy of the Mao era. -- James Flath * The Public Historian *“Utopian Ruins exemplifies a model of scholarship that seamlessly interconnects solid archival digging, informed theoretical guidance, and holistic yet nuanced in-depth analysis. . . . As a courageous pioneering act of resisting the massive amnesia of insurmountable loss throughout the Mao era, Utopian Ruins paves a new direction for curators to design their future exhibitions of what Mao’s China was like.” -- Enhua Zhang * Prism *Table of ContentsSeries Editor's Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. Mediating Memories of the Mao Era 1 1. Blood Testament 25 2. Surveillance Files 68 3. Utopian Photographs 100 4. Foreign Lenses 150 5. Factory Rubble 192 6. Museums and Memorials 227 Epilogue. Notes for Future Curators 261 Notes 277 Bibliography 321 Index

    £27.90

  • Bombay Brokers

    Duke University Press Bombay Brokers

    Book SynopsisBombay Brokers collect thirty-six character profiles of men and women whose knowledge and laborwhich is often seen as morally suspectare essential for navigating everyday life in Bombay, one of the world's most complex, dynamic, and populous cities.Trade Review“Lisa Björkman's collection Bombay Brokers offers a brilliantly multivocal account of the many worlds of practical negotiation and embodied expertise that animate urban life in one of India's most dynamic, polarized cities. Just as important, it is a remarkable work of collaborative ethnography that forges a distinctive methodological strategy through which to illuminate the crises and contradictions of contemporary urbanism in Bombay and beyond.” -- Neil Brenner, Urban Theory Lab, University of Chicago“This remarkable edited collection is a commendable contribution to the study of the links between mediation and intermediation, thus linking a venerable tradition of political anthropology with vivid portraits of the agency of brokers. It brings Bombay to life in ways that will surely inform the comparative study of fixers in other large cities caught in the flux of globalization.” -- Arjun Appadurai, Paulette Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University"An unconventional introduction to India's biggest city and an invitation to the joys and challenges of ethnography." -- Andrew J. Nathan * Foreign Affairs *“While [Bombay Brokers] is nominally about the city of Mumbai, there is little doubt that it will resonate with anyone interested in the story of urban change and continuity all around the world. It is a distinctive contribution to the literature on cities and labour and one that is bound to inspire similar books in years to come.” -- Sneha Annavarapu * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research *“[Bombay Brokers] is a highly engaging read, as well as a rich and very valuable contribution to the literatures about Mumbai and the concept of brokerage.... The book provides food for thought for debates about the specificity of Southern urbanisms and enriches our conceptual vocabulary for thinking about cities.” -- Pablo Holwitt * Antipode *“[Bombay Brokers] is a book that, in its combination of sharp-eyed detail and endlessly multiplying perspectives, manages to create a simulacrum of the city itself in all its plurality and vitality. . . . The structure of the book makes it especially useful as a teaching resource.” -- Jonathan Spencer * Journal of Anthropological Research *“Bombay Brokers is an expert exploration of how life is fashioned in a harshly hierarchical city through the activities of individuals—creative, complex, tenacious individuals who accomplish survival, success or profit, sometimes space to build a community, by brokering deals and mediating conflicts between messy, overflowing institutions.” -- Tania Bhattacharyya * Journal of Asian Studies *"Bombay Brokers is ideal for teaching. One could easily assign a single chapter, thematic domain, or the whole. The book’s careful interventions on theories of value, politics, urban belonging, and place making will invigorate advanced students as well as professional anthropologists and urban planners, while individual chapters would be ideal for teaching introductory courses on cultural anthropology, urbanism, or South Asia. This imminently readable and teachable volume burgeons with insights and new research avenues for people thinking about and living in cities in South Asia and beyond." -- Andrew McDowell * City & Society *"It should be read widely. An ambitious project like this is rarely produced, or even attempted, and rarely with this consistent level of craftsmanship and shared vision start to finish. The style and length of the chapters, short and lacking pretense and jargon, make it an ideal complement to more densely theoretical tracts in undergraduate and graduate courses on urban politics and development in South Asia and the global South. The book is also a model of collaborative inquiry." -- Patrick Inglis * Contemporary Sociology *“Bombay Brokers deserves to be read and engaged with by scholars across anthropology, political science, history, and critical area studies. … [It] vividly captures the art of ethnographic writing and the ends to which it can be mobilized.” -- Amogh Dhar Sharma * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments viii Introduction. Ethnography in the Global Interregnum / Lisa Björkman 1 Part I. Development / Rachel Sturman 47 1. Bunty: Singh Builder of Dreams / Lalitha Kamath 59 2. Imran: Housing Contractor / Tobias Baitsch 68 3. Dalpat: Manager of Services / Lisa Björkman 78 4. Mehmoodbhai: Toilet Operator / Prasad Khanolkar 87 5. Kaushal: Land Agglomerator / Llerena Guiu Searle 95 6. Janu: Sister-Supervisor of Migrant Construction Workers / Uday Chandra 101 Part II. Property. Lisa Björkman 109 7. Dr. K: Middle-Class Social Worker / Yaffa Truelove 121 8. Ashok Ravat: Shivaji Park's Sentinel / Lalit Vachani 128 9. Shazia: Proof Maker / Sangeeta Banerji 137 10. Nirmala: Kamathipura's Gatekeeper / Ratoola Kunda 145 11. Farhad: "Sue Maker" / Leilah Vevaina 154 Part III. Business / Tarini Bedi 163 12. Ramita: Surrogacy Agent / Daisy Deomampo 175 13. Muhammad: Revalorizer of E-Waste / Aneri Taskar 182 14. Deepak: Making Mumbai (in China) / Ka-Kin Cheuk 191 15. Lubaina: Framing "Development" / Lubaina Rangwala 199 16. Shankar: Delivering Authenticity / Ken Kuroda 208 17. Manal-Muna: Cooking Up Value / Tarini Bedi 216 18. Ramji: Business Energizer / Lisa Björkman 224 Part IV. Difference / Anjali Arondekar 233 19. Bhimsen Gaikwad: Singer of Justice / Shailaja Paik 243 20. Sultan: Image Manager / David J. Strohl 253 21. Raj: Carting Cosmopolitanism / Maura Finkelstein 262 22. Laxmi: Dealer in Emotion / R. Swaminathan 270 23. Dharamsey: Assembler of Tradition / Edward Simpson 278 24. Dalvi: Speaker of Cities / Gautam Pemmaraju 286 Part V. Publics / Lisa Björkman and Michael Collins 297 25. Shashi: Dot Connector / Rohan Shivkumar 307 26. Anil Prakash: Amplifier of Cinema-Industrial Connections / Kathryn Hardy 315 27. Gauravpant Mishra: Crowd Maker / Sarthak Bagchi 322 28. Srinivasan: Kingmaker / Simon Chauchard 329 29. Madhu: Door Opener / Bhushan Korgaonkar 337 30. Poornima: Designing Relations / Ajay Gandhi 347 Part VI. Truth / Lisa Björkman 355 31. Rajani Pandit: Detector of "Truths" / Srimati Basu 367 32. Afzal Taximan: Rumor Navigator / Sahana Udupa 378 33. Pawan: Prison Master / Atreyee Sen 384 34. Sujit: Master Communicator / Annelies Kusters 391 35. Chadda: Report Maker / Prasad Shetty & Rupali Gupte 401 36. Prakash: Data Entrepreneur / Amita Bhide 405 Conclusion. Other Places, Other Times / Lisa Mitchell 414 Glossary 425 About the Contributors 437 Index 441

    £23.39

  • Sound Alignments

    Duke University Press Sound Alignments

    Book SynopsisThe contributors to Sound Alignments explore the myriad forms of popular music in Asia during the Cold War, showing how it took on new meanings and significance as it traveled across the region and forged and challenged alliances, revolutions, and countercultures.Trade Review“With this vital addition to the growing literature in global music studies, the contributors to Sound Alignments reveal the vernacular cosmopolitanism of Asian popular music as a crucial dimension of Cold War cultural politics, nationalist policies, and internationalist rhetorics. An essential mapping of sonic history and musical mediation.” -- David Novak, author of * Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation *“Giving readers a happily cacophonous remapping of the sounds of the Cold War, Sound Alignments is an intellectually stimulating and multidimensional contribution to the study of twentieth-century popular music and the global culture of the Cold War.” -- Andrew F. Jones, author of * Circuit Listening: Chinese Popular Music in the Global 1960s *"Sound Alignments deserves recognition for tackling the 'mutually entangled structures' produced by the 'processes of imperialization, colonization, and the cold war' that have shaped an imaginary Asia (p. 212). . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -- T. S. Yamada * Choice *“[Sound Alignments] is a highly informative and intellectually stimulating book.” -- CedarBough T. Saeji * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction / Michael Bourdaghs, Paola Iovene, and Kaley Mason 1 Part I. Routes 1. Musical Travels of the Coconut Isles and the Socialist Popular / Jennifer Lindsay 43 2. Vehicles of Progress: The Kerala Rikshawala at the Intersection of Communism and Social Realism / Nisha Kommattam 69 3. East Asian Pop Music and an Incomplete Regional Contemporary / C.J. W.-L. Wee 93 Part II. Covers 4. Searching for Youth, the People (Minjung), and "Another" West While Living Through Anti-Communist Cold War Politics: South Korean "Folk Song" in the 1970s / Hyunjoon Shin 131 5. Cosmopolitanism, Vernacular Cosmopolitanism, and Sound Alignments: Covers and Cantonese Cover Songs in 1960s Hong Kong / Hon-Lun Yang 153 Part III. Fronts 6. Sonic Imaginaries of Okinawa: Daiku Tetsuhiro's Cosmopolitan "Paradise" / Marié Abe 173 7. Cosmaharaja: Popular Songs of Socialist Cosmopolitanism in Cold War India / Anna Schultz 201 8. Yellow Music Criticism during China's Anti-Rightest Campaign / Qian Zhang 231 Afterword: Asia's Soundings of the Cold War / Christine R. Yano 249 Bibliography 263 Contributors 285 Index 289

    £20.69

  • Maos Bestiary

    Duke University Press Maos Bestiary

    Book SynopsisControversy over the medicinal uses of wild animals in China has erupted around the ethics and efficacy of animal-based drugs, the devastating effect of animal farming on wildlife conservation, and the propensity of these practices to foster zoonotic diseases. In Mao''s Bestiary, Liz P. Y. Chee traces the history of the use of medicinal animals in modern China. While animal parts and tissue have been used in Chinese medicine for centuries, Chee demonstrates that the early Communist state expanded and systematized their production and use to compensate for drug shortages, generate foreign investment in high-end animal medicines, and facilitate an ideological shift toward legitimating folk medicines. Among other topics, Chee investigates the craze for chicken blood therapy during the Cultural Revolution, the origins of deer antler farming under Mao and bear bile farming under Deng, and the crucial influence of the Soviet Union and North Korea on Chinese zootherapies. In the procesTrade Review“Mao's Bestiary is a brilliant revisionary cultural history, and a pioneering work on animals. Liz P. Y. Chee has written a book that is more than just a historical study; it contributes to current political debates within China as well as globally. This will be a wonderful book to teach, not only in classes on contemporary China, but also on ethnography, history, social theory, environment and sustainability, and science studies.” -- Michael M. J. Fischer, author of * Anthropology in the Meantime: Experimental Ethnography, Theory, and Method for the Twenty-First Cent *“What a daring endeavor indeed to tackle the question that many have asked with urgency even before Covid-19: Why do Chinese people use parts of wild animals for health benefits? Uncovering the little-known creation of an animal drug industry in Mao’s China, which involved surprising actors from around the globe, Liz P. Y. Chee’s groundbreaking book exemplifies how history at its best can address our deep concern about animals and the troubled world we share with them.” -- Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, author of * Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity *“Chee’s richly evidenced work enhances our understanding of the interrelationship between the state, the market and individual actors.... [Mao's Bestiary] will be a most valuable read for historians of medicine and, in particular, for those who are devoted to wildlife and biodiversity conservation and who have the propensity of fostering zoonotic diseases.” -- Yun Hu * Social History of Medicine *“Useful and timely. . . . While the tension between multispecies ethics, public health, and techno-scientific innovation is at the heart of this fascinating and accurate investigation, [Mao’s Bestiary] also raises ontological questions about the borders between humans and nonhumans.” -- Frédéric Keck * Journal of Asian Studies *“All students, scholars, and practitioners of Chinese medicine need to read this book. . . . Additionally, anyone interested in China, including a general audience, will gain insight into the ways that supposed traditional Chinese practices have often been reconstituted for purposes other than therapy.” -- James Flowers * Asian Ethnology *“Mao’s Bestiary is the first comprehensive inquiry into the historical position and significance of animal-based drugs in modern Chinese medicine. At a time when the field of modern Chinese history, PRC history in particular, is grappling with limited access to local archives and travel restrictions, this book is an exemplary work that shows how China scholars can produce inspirational work even under unfavourable conditions.” -- Jongsik Christian Yi * History *“Mao’s Bestiary is a timely contribution to the scholarly exploration of the human-animal relations in the People’s Republic of China. . . . The book is a valuable source of information for policy scholars, wildlife activists, teachers and students in disciplines such as East Asian politics and culture, animal studies and wildlife conservation.” -- Peter J. Li * Animal Studies Journal *“Shedding light on the pharmaceutical industry in Asia, [Mao’s Bestiary] contributes to an important historiographical transition in the history of medicine and is worth the attention of historians, anthropologists and sociologists interested in this field.” -- Yang Li * The China Quarterly *“Mistaking the pharmacological exploitation of animals for something intrinsic to Chinese culture reinforces anti-Chinese prejudice and impedes reform. . . . By correcting this impression, Mao’s Bestiary benefits us all: historians, practitioners, activists, policy-makers–and caged bears too.” -- Hilary A. Smith * Bulletin of the History of Medicine *"In her remarkable history of the medicalisation of animal-derived components in Chinese medicine over the course of the second part of the twentieth century, Liz Chee constructs a subtle, incisive and often surprising account of pharmaceutical and medical reasoning, while complicating commonly held oppositional narratives that pit ‘Western biomedicine’ against other medical traditions, traditional Chinese medicine among them." -- Tatiana Chudakova * Inner Asia *"The breadth of these sources alone commends this very thorough and fascinating study. I strongly recommend Mao’s Bestiary to Sinologists, medical historians, animal studies scholars, and Chinese medicine practitioners interested in the history of the use of animal bodies in medical contexts. However, this book is very accessible to the non-specialist and thus would be of relevance to anyone who has a general interest in twentieth-century Chinese history and Chinese medicine." -- Scott Hurley * Pacific Affairs *"Mao’s Bestiary is an innovative and exciting look at a completely different side of traditional Chinese medicine far removed from the clinic or the hospital. . . . The book makes an important contribution to animal studies, science and technology studies, and history of medicine in China. Finally, Mao’s Bestiary is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the real anthropogenic ecology of 'wild' animals in China and their viral risks in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic." -- Lyle Fearnley * Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences *"It provides nothing less than the first in-depth study of the transformation of Chinese medicine(s) into a modern pharmaceutical industry, which alone makes this book a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in Chinese medicine. . . . Mao’s Bestiary is written in an accessible and engaging style making it well suited for teaching undergraduate students, while its originality and analytical strength ensures that it will become a standard reference in scholarship on Chinese medicine and Asian medicines more broadly." -- Stephan Kloos * East Asian Science, Technology and Society *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. "Abandon Chinese Medicine, Retain Chinese Drugs": Creating a State Pharmaceutical Sector 27 2. "To Learn from the Soviet Union": Russian Influence on Chinese Pharmaceuticals 53 3. The Great Leap Forward and the Rise of Medicinal Animal Farming 71 4. The Quest for Innovation: Folk Remedies and Animal Therapies 99 5. "Economic Animals": Deng's Reforms and the Rise of Bear Farming 139 Conclusion 161 Notes 173 Glossary 225 Bibliography 229 Index 265

    £72.25

  • Newborn Socialist Things

    Duke University Press Newborn Socialist Things

    Book SynopsisLaurence Coderre explores the material culture of the Chinese Cultural Revolution to show how it paved the way for rampant commodification and consumption in contemporary China.Trade Review“Laurence Coderre takes ordinary objects from everyday life to create extraordinary insights into the Mao era and China today. Her book is a true tour de force in contemporary Chinese studies.” -- Paul Clark, author of * Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens *“Laurence Coderre's serious engagement with theories of materiality rooted in deeply historicized practices, relations, and things provides a politically powerful rethinking of Marxism, culture, and materiality. This superb book will be of immense interest not only to scholars in Chinese studies and Asian studies, but also to those in cultural studies, visual and material culture, sound studies, comparative socialism, Cold War studies, and Marxism.” -- Tina Mai Chen, coeditor of * The Material of World History *“Newborn Socialist Things is a tour de force: fascinating, inspiring, and challenging. It is a must-read for anyone interested in socialist (and postsocialist) China, its material culture, and its materiality.” -- Jennifer Altehenger * Journal of Asian Studies *“Brilliant and pathbreaking.” -- Michael Dutton * The China Quarterly *"Well written and engaging. . . . Newborn Socialist Things is an accomplished, meticulously researched, and fascinating book that will be of interest to scholars of all forms of cultural production in Mao-era China." -- Amy Jane Barnes * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. The Sonic Imaginary 27 2. Selling Revolution 54 3. Productivist Display 82 4. Illuminating the Commodity Fetish 112 5. Remediating the Hero 139 6. The Model in the Mirror 170 Coda 190 Notes 197 Bibliography 221 Index 241

    £72.25

  • In the Event of Women

    Duke University Press In the Event of Women

    Book SynopsisTani Barlow outlines the stakes of what she calls “the event of women” in China—the discovery of the truth that women are the reproductive equivalent of men, revealing how historical universals are effected in places where truth claims are not usually sought.Trade Review“This book presents a glorious rethinking of the historical and theoretical relation established between ‘women’ and social ‘truth’ as a universal but also specifically Chinese ‘event’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tani Barlow dissects complexity with forensic precision. In exceptionally clear exposition, she invites us to account for our present through a rigorous analysis of concepts, histories, and the theories of human and female life spun therefrom. Illuminating and essential.” -- Rebecca E. Karl, Professor of History, New York University“Shifting critical focus from area studies and nation, this alluringly erudite book theorizes capital and intellectual history to recenter modern China on the event of women. Tani Barlow positions her delightful reading of hundreds of gendered advertising images as harbingers of Chinese twentieth-century cultural life while reviving exciting Chinese traditions of feminist sociology and political thought. A provocative and creative study, In the Event of Women brings previous approaches to sinology into destabilizing dialogue with broader debates in intellectual history, visual studies, and feminism.” -- Timothy Murray, Professor of Comparative Literature and Literatures in English, Cornell UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction to the Event 1 1. Conditions of Thinking 19 2. Foundational Chinese Sociology 71 3. Vernacular Sociology 100 4. The Social Life of Commercial Ephemera 123 5. Nakedness and Interiority 162 6. Wang Guangmei's Qipao 191 Conclusion 220 Notes 231 Bibliography 259 Index 283

    £75.65

  • Healing at the Periphery

    Duke University Press Healing at the Periphery

    Book SynopsisThe contributors to Healing at the Periphery examine Sowa Rigpa, or Tibetan medicine, and the central part practitioners of Tibetan healing known as amchis play in Indian Himalayan communities and the exile Tibetan community.Trade Review“These wonderfully detailed ethnographic studies look at ‘Tibetan Medicine’ from the peripheries and the grass roots of Indian Himalayan regions. A diverse and populous amchi medicine is here revealed as plural, embedded in communities and in history, and much valued by sick and healthy people alike. This volume promises to completely recast and thoroughly pluralize Tibetan studies and Asian medical history.” -- Judith Farquhar, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of ChicagoTable of ContentsIntroduction. The Indian Face of Sowa Rigpa / Stephan Kloos and Laurent Pordié 1 1. The Amchi as Villager: Status and Its Refusal in Ladakh / Fernanda Pirie 23 2. Good Medicines, Bad Hearts: The Social Role of the Amchi in a Buddhist Dard Community / Stephan Kloos 41 3. Where There is No Amchi: Tibetan Medicine and Rural-Urban Migration Among Nomadic Pastoralists in Ladakh / Calum Blaikie 65 4. The Monetarization of Tibetan Medicine: An Ethnography of Village-Based Development Activities in Lingshed / Florian Besch and Isabelle Guérin 95 5. The Amchi at the Margins: Notes on Childbirth Practices in Ladakh / Laurent Pordié and Pascale Hancart Petitet 119 6. A Case of Wind Disorder: The Interplay of Amchi Medicine and Ritual Treatments in Zangskar / Kim Gutschow 143 7. Allegiance to Whose Community? Effects of Men-Tsee-Khang Policies on the Role of Amchi in the Darjeeling Hills / Barbara Gerke 171 Afterword. When "Periphery" Becomes Central / Sienna R. Craig 197 Contributors 201 Index 205

    £72.25

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