Asian history Books

Book SynopsisSpacious Minds argues that resilience is not a mere absence of suffering. Sara E. Lewis''s research reveals how those who cope most gracefully may indeed experience deep pain and loss. Looking at the Tibetan diaspora, she challenges perspectives that liken resilience to the hardiness of physical materials, suggesting people should bounce back from adversity. More broadly, this ethnography calls into question the tendency to use trauma as an organizing principle for all studies of conflict where suffering is understood as an individual problem rooted in psychiatric illness.Beyond simply articulating the ways that Tibetan categories of distress are different from biomedical ones, Spacious Minds shows how Tibetan Buddhism frames new possibilities for understanding resilience. Here, the social and religious landscape encourages those exposed to violence to see past events as impermanent and illusory, where debriefing, working-through, or processing past events only Trade ReviewLewis' expertise in both Western and Tibetan approaches to trauma and resilience could not be more needed at this time, and Spacious Minds distills her expertise in a manner that is scholarly, engaging, and accessible to lay readers, clinicians, and academics alike. Her work is a profound reminder that there is no one right way to understand or experience trauma, nor one right way to recover from it. * Buddhadharma *Sara E. Lewis's Spacious Minds is an important and engaging work for those interested in cross-cultural psychology and well-being, anthropology, diaspora studies, those seeking a better understanding of the complexities designing public and mental health interventions, and all who seek to understand 'sociocultural practices that bolster communities under duress.' * Medical Antrhopology Quarterly *Spacious Minds thus offers a brilliant illustration of how the anthropological study of the mind provides an innovative avenue to illuminate and engage with the very material world of policy, politics and power. * Anthropology in Action *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Note on Transliteration Central Characters Introduction 1. Life in Exile 2. Mind Training 3. Resisting Chronicity 4. The Paradox of Testimony 5. Open Sky of Mind Conclusion Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisIn a deeply ethnographic appraisal, based on years of in situ research, The Battle for Fortune looks at the rising stakes of Tibetans' encounters with Chinese state-led development projects in the early 2000s. The book builds upon anthropology's qualitative approach to personhood, power and space to rethink the premises and consequences of economic development campaigns in China''s multiethnic northwestern province of Qinghai.Charlene Makley considers Tibetans' encounters with development projects as first and foremost a historically situated interpretive politics, in which people negotiate the presence or absence of moral and authoritative persons and their associated jurisdictions and powers. Because most Tibetans believe the active presence of deities and other invisible beings has been the ground of power, causation, and fertile or fortunate landscapes, Makley also takes divine beings seriously, refusing to relegate them to a separate, less consequential, religiousTrade ReviewCharlene Makley's The Battle for Fortune, the latest contribution to contemporary Tibetan studies, is a laudable accomplishment of her long years of ethnographic work with Tibetan communities in Qinghai Province... Overall, the book is a wellwritten dialogic ethnography—a solid addition to scholarship on the region as well as testament to consequences of modernization in a Tibetan region. * American Anthropologist *This book foregrounds the worth of anthropological-qualitative research in studying development issues in China and elsewhere. Moreover, it promises a hope for anthropology with regards to its humanistic touch. * The China Quarterly *Charlene Makley's The Battle for Fortune is a timely and insightful study of the long-term influence of development and urbanization on village society in contemporary eastern Tibet -- Andrew Grant, University of Boulder, Colorado * Himalaya *

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Book SynopsisIn a deeply ethnographic appraisal, based on years of in situ research, The Battle for Fortune looks at the rising stakes of Tibetans' encounters with Chinese state-led development projects in the early 2000s. The book builds upon anthropology's qualitative approach to personhood, power and space to rethink the premises and consequences of economic development campaigns in China''s multiethnic northwestern province of Qinghai.Charlene Makley considers Tibetans' encounters with development projects as first and foremost a historically situated interpretive politics, in which people negotiate the presence or absence of moral and authoritative persons and their associated jurisdictions and powers. Because most Tibetans believe the active presence of deities and other invisible beings has been the ground of power, causation, and fertile or fortunate landscapes, Makley also takes divine beings seriously, refusing to relegate them to a separate, less consequential, religiousTrade ReviewCharlene Makley's The Battle for Fortune, the latest contribution to contemporary Tibetan studies, is a laudable accomplishment of her long years of ethnographic work with Tibetan communities in Qinghai Province... Overall, the book is a wellwritten dialogic ethnography—a solid addition to scholarship on the region as well as testament to consequences of modernization in a Tibetan region. * American Anthropologist *This book foregrounds the worth of anthropological-qualitative research in studying development issues in China and elsewhere. Moreover, it promises a hope for anthropology with regards to its humanistic touch. * The China Quarterly *Charlene Makley's The Battle for Fortune is a timely and insightful study of the long-term influence of development and urbanization on village society in contemporary eastern Tibet -- Andrew Grant, University of Boulder, Colorado * Himalaya *

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Book SynopsisWith essays covering diverse topics, from seafood trade across the Vietnam-China border, to street traders in Hanoi, to gold shops in Ho Chi Minh City, Traders in Motion spans the fields of economic and political anthropology, geography, and sociology to illuminate how Vietnam''s rapidly expanding market economy is formed and transformed by everyday interactions among traders, suppliers, customers, family members, neighbors, and officials.The contributions shed light on the micropolitics of local-level economic agency in the paradoxical context of Vietnam''s socialist orientation and its contemporary neoliberal economic and social transformation. The essays examine how Vietnamese traders and officials engage in on-the-ground contestations to define space, promote or limit mobility, and establish borders, both physical and conceptual. The contributors show how trading experiences shape individuals'' notions of self and personhood, not just as economic actors, but also in termsTrade ReviewThis edited volumen successfully presents its arguments and analyses with clear contextualization aand well-organized theoretical frameworks... I highly reccomend this book * Sojourn *Inarguably an exceptional collection on Vietnam's contemporary political economy, the book provides a comprehensive and critical update of how post socialism and neo- liberalism interplay (and clash) in Vietnam, and how powerful macrostructures and ideologies shape, and in return, become shaped by grassroots actors through their everyday practices. * Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography *

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Book SynopsisBattling the Buddha of Love is a work of advocacy anthropology that explores the controversial plans and practices of the Maitreya Project, a transnational Buddhist organization, as it sought to build the world''s tallest statue as a multi-million-dollar gift to India. Hoping to forcibly acquire 750 acres of occupied land for the statue park in the Kushinagar area of Uttar Pradesh, the Buddhist statue planners ran into obstacle after obstacle, including a full-scale grassroots resistance movement of Indian farmers working to Save the Land.Falcone sheds light on the aspirations, values, and practices of both the Buddhists who worked to construct the statue, as well as the Indian farmer-activists who tirelessly protested against the Maitreya Project. Because the majority of the supporters of the Maitreya Project statue are converts to Tibetan Buddhism, individuals Falcone terms non-heritage practitioners, she focuses on the spectacular collision of cultural values betweeTrade ReviewFalcone draws on fieldwork and her own personal engagement with the resistance to describe the struggle over the creation of what would have been the largest-ever Buddha image. * Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly *Falcone's advocacy does not compromise the rigor or balance of her analysis. She draws on more than a decade of site observation and personal interviews to produce nuanced ethnographies of the various groups as they struggle with the unintended consequences of Buddhism's globalization.... It will be a valuable resource for serious scholars of contemporary Buddhism and for those studying Buddhism and anthropology. * Choice *As the title of this absorbing book Battling the Buddha of Love: A Cultural Biography of the Greatest Statue Never Built aptly describes, this lucid ethnography by Jessica Falcone explores the transnational life of a globalizing Tibetan Buddhist organization. * Reading Religion *This book is a fruitful intellectual effort that challenges the stereotypical narration of protests... The end notes are extremely illuminative. The strength of the work is the rigor shown by the author in the blending of religious studies, history, social and cultural anthropology, and interviews with people, both members of the FPMT and farmers. * H- Net (H-Diplo) *Dr. Falcone offers compelling insights into the concepts of temporality and futurity, grassroots activism in the face of a transnational organization, and the ethics of engaged anthropological practice. * New Books in Anthropology *The book opens the eyes of the readers as blind devotion blocks the critical mind and compassion, and can be lost in unrealistic, pink thinking. I highly reccomend it. * Buddhismus Aktuell *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Meditation/DHYANA: Focusing on the Maitreya Project Part One: The Transnational Buddhist Statue-Makers 1. Community/SANGHA: FPMT's Transnational Buddhists 2. The Teachings/DHARMA: Religious Practice in a Global Buddhist Institution 3. The Statue/MURTI: Planning a Colossal Maitreya 4. The Relics/SARIRA: Worship and Fundraising with the Relic Tour 5. Aspirations/ASHA: Hope, the Future Tense, and Making (Up) Progress on the Maitreya Project Part Two: The Kushinagari Resistance 6. Holy Place/TIRTHA: Living in the Place of the Buddha's Death 7. Steadfastness/ADITTHANA: Indian Farmers Resist the Buddha of Love 8. Loving-Kindness/MAITRI: Contested Notions of Ethics, Values, and Progress 9. Compassion/KARUNA: Reflections on Engaged Anthropology Conclusion: Faith/SHRADDHA: Guru Devotion, Authority, and Belief in the Shadow of the Maitreya Project Epilogue: Rebirth/SAMSARA: The Future of the Maitreya Project

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Book SynopsisGrounded in ethnographic and archival research on the Indonesian island of Bali, More Than Words challenges conventional understandings of textuality and writing as they pertain to the religious traditions of Southeast Asia. Through a nuanced study of Balinese script as employed in rites of healing, sorcery, and self-defense, Richard Fox explores the aims and desires embodied in the production and use of palm-leaf manuscripts, amulets, and other inscribed objects. Balinese often attribute both life and independent volition to manuscripts and copperplate inscriptions, presenting them with elaborate offerings. Commonly addressed with personal honorifics, these script-bearing objects may become partners with humans and other sentient beings in relations of exchange and mutual obligation. The question is how such practices of the living letter may be related to more recently emergent conceptions of writinglinked to academic philology, reform Hinduism, and local politicswhiTrade ReviewIn eight carefully focused and crafted chapters—each of which could stand alone—Fox explores the what, when, where, and why of writing on Bali. Fox more than delivers on his promise to add to an understanding of the local belief that the inscription itself is animated and as such venerated.... Fox more than surpasses his two stated goals: to make a "modest" contribution to the study of the Balinese system of beliefs, and to rethink human writing itself. This important work is a must for those interested in Asian religions and recommended for those interested in humanity's unique abilities. * Choice *Richard Fox has written the present book to elucidate what is going on in Bali and he has managed to do so in an attractive and readable way...The book is a breath of fresh air because of its admirable lucidity. It has been written in an accessible way and does not run away with theoretical language and thus does not alienate non-experts. This is crucial because it can now be read by non-specialists but also by specialists in other fields. It would be extremely useful if this book would be seen as an example of how indeed to study this kind of subject. -- Dick van der Meij, DREAMSEA * Archipel *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgements A Note on Orthography and Related Conventions 1. Manuscripts, Madness 2. Writing and the Idea of Ecology 3. The Meaning of Life, or How to Do Things with Letters 4. Practice and the Problem of Complexity 5. Maintaining a Houseyard as a Practice 6. Tradition as Argument 7. Translational Indeterminacy 8. Wagging the Dog Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisGrounded in ethnographic and archival research on the Indonesian island of Bali, More Than Words challenges conventional understandings of textuality and writing as they pertain to the religious traditions of Southeast Asia. Through a nuanced study of Balinese script as employed in rites of healing, sorcery, and self-defense, Richard Fox explores the aims and desires embodied in the production and use of palm-leaf manuscripts, amulets, and other inscribed objects. Balinese often attribute both life and independent volition to manuscripts and copperplate inscriptions, presenting them with elaborate offerings. Commonly addressed with personal honorifics, these script-bearing objects may become partners with humans and other sentient beings in relations of exchange and mutual obligation. The question is how such practices of the living letter may be related to more recently emergent conceptions of writinglinked to academic philology, reform Hinduism, and local politicswhiTrade ReviewIn eight carefully focused and crafted chapters—each of which could stand alone—Fox explores the what, when, where, and why of writing on Bali. Fox more than delivers on his promise to add to an understanding of the local belief that the inscription itself is animated and as such venerated.... Fox more than surpasses his two stated goals: to make a "modest" contribution to the study of the Balinese system of beliefs, and to rethink human writing itself. This important work is a must for those interested in Asian religions and recommended for those interested in humanity's unique abilities. * Choice *Richard Fox has written the present book to elucidate what is going on in Bali and he has managed to do so in an attractive and readable way...The book is a breath of fresh air because of its admirable lucidity. It has been written in an accessible way and does not run away with theoretical language and thus does not alienate non-experts. This is crucial because it can now be read by non-specialists but also by specialists in other fields. It would be extremely useful if this book would be seen as an example of how indeed to study this kind of subject. -- Dick van der Meij, DREAMSEA * Archipel *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgements A Note on Orthography and Related Conventions 1. Manuscripts, Madness 2. Writing and the Idea of Ecology 3. The Meaning of Life, or How to Do Things with Letters 4. Practice and the Problem of Complexity 5. Maintaining a Houseyard as a Practice 6. Tradition as Argument 7. Translational Indeterminacy 8. Wagging the Dog Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisIn Chinese Economic Statecraft, William J. Norris introduces an innovative theory that pinpoints how states employ economic tools of national power to pursue their strategic objectives. Norris shows what Chinese economic statecraft is, how it works, and why it is more or less effective. Norris provides an accessible tool kit to help us better understand important economic developments in the People's Republic of China. He links domestic Chinese political economy with the international ramifications of China's economic power as a tool for realizing China's strategic foreign policy interests. He presents a novel approach to studying economic statecraft that calls attention to the central challenge of how the state is (or is not) able to control and direct the behavior of economic actors. Norris identifies key causes of Chinese state control through tightly structured, substate and crossnational comparisons of business-government relations. These cases range across three Trade ReviewAn impressive scholarly addition to our study of the contemporary Chinese foreign policy. It should be of great interest to both China Studies scholars as well as anyone interested in foreign policy analysis and international political economy. * Journal of Chinese Political Science *Norris’ new book is one of the first to focus on Chinese state-directed economic activities and their political effectiveness.... Norris sets a very ambitious research objective by not only selecting and examining seven extremely different cases, but also trying to build a new analytical framework based on principal-agent theory. * PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICS *Table of ContentsPart I ON ECONOMIC STATECRAFT 1. What Is Economic Statecraft? 2. The Challenge of State Control 3. Economics and China's Grand Strategy Part II SECURING STRATEGIC RAW MATERIALS 4. "Going Out" and China’s Search for Energy Security 5. Rio Tinto and the (In)visible Hand of the State Part III CROSS-STRAIT ECONOMIC STATECRAFT 6. Coercive Leverage across the Taiwan Strait 7. Interest Transformation across the Taiwan Strait Part IV CHINA’S SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS 8. State Administration of Foreign Exchange 9. What Right Looks Like 10. The China Investment Corporation Concluding Implications

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Book SynopsisBolder economic policy could have addressed the persistent bouts of deflation in post-bubble Japan, write Gene Park, Saori N. Katada, Giacomo Chiozza, and Yoshiko Kojo in Taming Japan''s Deflation. Despite warnings from economists, intense political pressure, and well-articulated unconventional policy options to address this problem, Japan''s central bank, the Bank of Japan (BOJ), resisted taking the bold actions that the authors believe would have significantly helped.With Prime Minister Abe Shinzo''s return to power, Japan finally shifted course at the start of 2013 with the launch of Abenomicsan economic agenda to reflate the economyand Abe''s appointment of new leadership at the BOJ. As Taming Japan''s Deflation shows, the BOJ''s resistance to experimenting with bolder policy stemmed from entrenched policy ideas that were hostile to activist monetary policy. The authors explain how these policy ideas evolved over the course of the BOJ''s long history and gaiTrade ReviewThis is an outstanding book on a topic of great importance... this book provides the most detailed and insightful account written in the English language of the ideational and political institutional contexts that inform the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) decisions about monetary policy in the contemporary era. * Perspectives on Politics *An informed and in-depth look at the institutional, intellectual, and political environment that allowed deflation to take root... Taming Japan's Deflation is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand why Japan lingered in deflation for so long and how it switched to different policies that may be leading to better outcomes. * Pacific Affairs *

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Book SynopsisDemocracy for Sale is an on-the-ground account of Indonesian democracy, analyzing its election campaigns and behind-the-scenes machinations. Edward Aspinall and Ward Berenschot assess the informal networks and political strategies that shape access to power and privilege in the messy political environment of contemporary Indonesia.In post-Suharto Indonesian politics the exchange of patronage for political support is commonplace. Clientelism, argue the authors, saturates the political system, and in Democracy for Sale they reveal the everyday practices of vote buying, influence peddling, manipulating government programs, and skimming money from government projects. In doing so, Aspinall and Berenschot advance three major arguments. The first argument points toward the role of religion, kinship, and other identities in Indonesian clientelism. The second explains how and why Indonesia''s distinctive system of free-wheeling clientelism came into being. And the thirdTrade ReviewA painstakingly researched examination of the way Indonesia has become a patronage democracy.... Aspinall and Berenschot's book shows how many has weakened political parties, ensures that personalities matter more than policy, favors incumbents, and almost forces politicians to become corrupt in order to recoup the expense of running for office. * New York Review of Books *Democracy for Sale offers deep insights into political life in Southeast Asia and fresh contributions to the age-old debate over whether true democracy, uncompromised by money and entrenched power, is ever possible. * Foreign Affairs *Table of ContentsList of Tables and Figures Glossary Acknowledgments 1. Indonesia's Patronage Democracy 2. Capturing Varieties of Clientelism Part 1: INSTITUTIONS 3. Historical Origins of Free-Wheeling Clientelism 4. Electoral Institutions, Political Parties and Candidates Part 2: NETWORKS AND RESOURCES 5. Success Teams and Vote Buying 6. Social Networks and Club Goods Part 3: DISCRETIONARY CONTROL 7. Governance and Public Spending 8. Bureaucrats and the Power of Office Part 4: COMPARING ACROSS INDONESIA 9. Campaign Financing, Business and the Public Sphere 10. Explaining Variation in Indonesia's Patronage Democracy Conclusion: Clientelism and the Search for Good Governance Appendixes Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisThe Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere offers a lucid, dynamic, and highly readable history of Japan''s attempt to usher in a new order in Asia during World War II.? Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture ReviewIn The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy A. Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan''s total empire met the total war of World War II. He illuminates the ways in which the imperial center and its individual colonies understood the concept of the Sphere, offering two sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, and always intertwined visions—one from Japan, the other from Burma and the Philippines.Yellen argues that, from 1940 to 1945, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere epitomized two concurrent wars for Asia''s future: the first was for a new type of empire in Asia, and the second was a political war, waged by nationalisTrade ReviewThe author's insights, based on extensive research, add depth to understanding of Japan's wartime decision-making process while also correcting misreadings of the role played by its erstwhile collaborators in Burma and the Philippines * Choice *No English-language monographs have [yet] explored the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere—Japan's wartime effort to impose a new regional order—from the vantage point of Japanese high policy. Jeremy Yellen has admirably filled this gap, offering innovative insights into Japan's abortive effort to redefine the international relations of East and Southeast Asia from the late 1930s to 1945. * Global Asia *Yellen offers a useful examination of the changing and contested meaning of Japan's proclaimed 'Co-Prosperity Sphere.' [His] work helps inform about an important but opaque aspect of World War II history that influenced the receding of Asian empires after that war. * Journal of Military History *The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is in fact a truly timely addition to the historiography of modern Japan in general and a fundamental contribution to the study of the Japanese wartime experience. * The Japan Society *In this outstanding new study of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy Yellen challenges the longstanding view that the Sphere was little more than a facade for Japan's predatory imperialism and that Asian leaders who collaborated with Japan were traitors to their countries. [E]ssential reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Japanese empire and its enduring legacy in Southeast Asia. * Pacific Historical Review *We had to wait forty-four years, but Yellen's The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War was worth the wait. In his masterful account regarding the Co-Prosperity Sphere, Yellen argues that it was nothing more than 'a failed dream'—an incoherent vision that was contested and an idea that never coalesced into a coherent policy that could be enacted. * Journal of Asian Studies *The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere offers a lucid, dynamic, and highly readable history of Japan's attempt to usher in a new order in Asia during World War II. * Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review *With his excellent command of Japanese and use of rich Japanese sources, Yellen reveals the ambivalence evident in Japan's policy making and implementation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. * Southeast Asian Studies *Yellen's study is a welcome step toward a fuller understanding of GEACPS led by international scholars on a truly global basis. * Pacific Affairs *Yellen describes in his deep empirical analysis, showing mastery of the archival record in Japan and the long stretch of Japanese secondary scholarship, how Japan was attempting to shape its own new world order. The delicious banquet that [he] serves up is the complex and at times completely incongruous definition of the sphere. * Journal of Japanese Studies *

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Book SynopsisHistorians have long neglected Afghanistan''s broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power, James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state.In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providiTrade ReviewThe book is well-written and a major contribution to an important but often forgotten aspect of Afghanistan. * Choice *Poppies, Politics, and Power fills a notable gap in studies of Afghanistan, and does it very well. The author makes admirable use of his sources to bolster a credible and interesting line of argument. In doing so, he contributes to a growing literature which challenges older accounts of state formation in Afghanistan that understate both Afghan agency, and the powerful effects of interactions between actors in Afghanistan and players in the wider world, all with objectives of their own to realize. * PACIFIC AFFAIRS *

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Book SynopsisSovereignty Experiments tells the story of how authorities in Korea, Russia, China, and Japanthrough diplomatic negotiations, border regulations, legal categorization of subjects and aliens, and cultural policiescompeted to control Korean migrants as they suddenly moved abroad by the thousands in the late nineteenth century. Alyssa M. Park argues that Korean migrants were essential to the process of establishing sovereignty across four states because they tested the limits of state power over territory and people in a borderland where authority had been long asserted but not necessarily enforced. Traveling from place to place, Koreans compelled statesmen to take notice of their movement and to experiment with various policies to govern it. Ultimately, states'' efforts culminated in drastic measures, including the complete removal of Koreans on the Soviet side. As Park demonstrates, what resulted was the stark border regime that still stands between North Korea, Russia, and ChTrade ReviewSovereignty Experiments largely succeeds in what it sets out to do—demonstrate the crucialrole that Korean migrants played in determining Northeast Asian borders and sovereignties. * The Russian Review *A fascinating narrative about modern state making in a transnational and multiethnic frontier... One of the pioneer studies of the subject and a must read for students who are interested in the historical connection between East Asia and Russia. Scholars in the fields of the borderlands, empires, nation-states, migration, and diaspora studies would also find it a highly engaging reference. * H-Diplo *The book contributes to historical geography by showing that modern notions of territory and sovereignty in Asia were not simply adopted from some European ideal type or juridical construct, but were negotiated over time and through places such as borders, villages, farms, and cities... Overall, the book is a fascinating analysis of a complicated borderland. * Journal of Historical Geography *

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Book SynopsisAulino''s work is a strong contribution to the study of aging in the field of medical anthropology specifically because of the focus on the embodied performativity of care evident in her research practice and analysis. Rituals of Care is an excellent book, which offers a thoughtful approach to everyday care in Thailand. ? Anthropology & AgingEnd-of-life issues are increasingly central to discussions within medical anthropology, the anthropology of political action, and the study of Buddhist philosophy and practice. Felicity Aulino''s Rituals of Care speaks directly to these important anthropological and existential conversations. Against the backdrop of global population aging and increased attention to care for the elderly, both personal and professional, Aulino challenges common presumptions about the universal nature of caring. The way she examines particular sets of emotional and practical ways of being with people, and their sTrade ReviewThis book should be read by all students of Thai culture who have an interest in the everyday life, religious practices and socio-political conditions surrounding people's everyday lives. It also makes a remarkable contribution to the understanding of care, as well as to the emerging field of the anthropology of morality. * South East Asia Research *Rituals of Care is a complex, compelling empirical and conceptual work that engages deeply with questions of caregiving and volunteerism in the Theravada Buddhist context of Thai society. The book is highly recommended for researchers on Theravada Buddhism, caregiving, volunteerism, medical and political anthropology, as well as scholars of Thai society and culture more generally. * Pacific Affairs *Aulino's work is a strong contribution to the study of aging in the field of medical anthropology specifically because of the focus on the embodied performativity of care evident in her research practice and analysis. Rituals of Care is an excellent book, which offers a thoughtful approach to everyday care in Thailand. * Anthropology & Aging *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Karma of Care: Ordinary Actions and Their Consequences 2. The Conditioning of Care: Intention, Emotion, and Restraint 3. The Subjects of Care: Perceiving the Social Body 4. The Civic Landscape of Care: Merit and the Spirit of Volunteering for Elders 5. The Violence of Care: Pity and Compassion, Patronage and Repression Conclusion: On Unending Care: Rituals for Making Things So

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Book SynopsisWhat if the job of police was to cultivate the political will of a community to live with itself (rather than enforce law, keep order, or fight crime)? In Sentiment, Reason, and Law, Jeffrey T. Martin describes a world where that is the case.The Republic of China on Taiwan spent nearly four decades as a single-party state under dictatorial rule (19491987) before transitioning to liberal democracy. Here, Martin describes the social life of a neighborhood police station during the first rotation in executive power following the democratic transition. He shows an apparent paradox of how a strong democratic order was built on a foundation of weak police powers, and demonstrates how that was made possible by the continuity of an illiberal idea of policing. His conclusion from this paradox is that the purpose of the police was to cultivate the political will of the community rather than enforce laws and keep order.As Sentiment, Reason, and Law shows, the policeTrade ReviewJeff Martin's book is a very welcome volume in Cornell's ground-breaking Police/ Worlds series on security, crime and governance, and this book offers the kind of sustained intellectual analysis of police that I wish I had been able to read as a neophyte comparative criminological researcher prior to visiting Taiwan nearly twenty years ago. Sentiment, Reason, and Law does precisely that, and invites us to consider what concepts, contexts and forms are most pertinent for building a reflective relation to the present. Martin spent almost a decade living in Taiwan, and this book is a fittingly rich intellectual legacy of his sojourn on that enchanted island. * The China Quarterly *Jeffrey T. Martin's book is a masterful addition to the ethnographic literature both on the anthropology of the state and for the anthropology of police and policing. The strength of the book lies in the in-depth fieldwork that, combined with a refusal of presentism, enables Martin to distance himself from culturalism and present Taiwanese police and its work as part of a historical process. Thus, this book can be highly recommended as a contribution to the anthropology of policing and of the state. * Polar *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Backstage Passage 2. The Paichusuo and the Jurisdiction of Qing 3. Policing and the Politics of Care 4. Administrative Repair 5. Holding Things Together 6. Strong Democracy, Weak Police Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWhat if the job of police was to cultivate the political will of a community to live with itself (rather than enforce law, keep order, or fight crime)? In Sentiment, Reason, and Law, Jeffrey T. Martin describes a world where that is the case.The Republic of China on Taiwan spent nearly four decades as a single-party state under dictatorial rule (19491987) before transitioning to liberal democracy. Here, Martin describes the social life of a neighborhood police station during the first rotation in executive power following the democratic transition. He shows an apparent paradox of how a strong democratic order was built on a foundation of weak police powers, and demonstrates how that was made possible by the continuity of an illiberal idea of policing. His conclusion from this paradox is that the purpose of the police was to cultivate the political will of the community rather than enforce laws and keep order.As Sentiment, Reason, and Law shows, the policeTrade ReviewJeff Martin's book is a very welcome volume in Cornell's ground-breaking Police/ Worlds series on security, crime and governance, and this book offers the kind of sustained intellectual analysis of police that I wish I had been able to read as a neophyte comparative criminological researcher prior to visiting Taiwan nearly twenty years ago. Sentiment, Reason, and Law does precisely that, and invites us to consider what concepts, contexts and forms are most pertinent for building a reflective relation to the present. Martin spent almost a decade living in Taiwan, and this book is a fittingly rich intellectual legacy of his sojourn on that enchanted island. * The China Quarterly *Jeffrey T. Martin's book is a masterful addition to the ethnographic literature both on the anthropology of the state and for the anthropology of police and policing. The strength of the book lies in the in-depth fieldwork that, combined with a refusal of presentism, enables Martin to distance himself from culturalism and present Taiwanese police and its work as part of a historical process. Thus, this book can be highly recommended as a contribution to the anthropology of policing and of the state. * Polar *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Backstage Passage 2. The Paichusuo and the Jurisdiction of Qing 3. Policing and the Politics of Care 4. Administrative Repair 5. Holding Things Together 6. Strong Democracy, Weak Police Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn a comprehensive and theoretically novel analysis, Take Back Our Future unveils the causes, processes, and implications of the 2014 seventy-nine-day occupation movement in Hong Kong known as the Umbrella Movement. The essays presented here by a team of experts with deep local knowledge ask: how and why had a world financial center known for its free-wheeling capitalism transformed into a hotbed of mass defiance and civic disobedience?Take Back Our Future argues that the Umbrella Movement was a response to China''s internal colonization strategiespolitical disenfranchisement, economic subsumption, and identity reengineeringin post-handover Hong Kong. The contributors outline how this historic and transformative movement formulated new cultural categories and narratives, fueled the formation and expansion of civil society organizations and networks both for and against the regime, and spurred the regime''s turn to repression and structural closure of dissent. AlTrade ReviewTake Back Our Future marks a timely and necessary scholarly intervention that addresses both the internal movement dynamics and the wider structural contradictions that led to the rise and fall of the UM, allowing us to reflect on its theoretical and practical implications for Hong Kong and beyond. The volume's interrogation of the why and how of collective action in a hybrid regime marks a strong contribution to social movement studies. * Pacific Affairs *Table of Contents1. Take Back Our Future: An Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, by Ching Kwan Lee 2. Prefigurative Politics of the Umbrella Movement: An Ethnography of Its Promise and Predicament, by Alex Chow 3. Transgressive Politics in Occupy Mongkok, by Samson Yuen 4. The Spectrum of Frames and Disputes in the Umbrella Movement, by Wing Sang Law 5. Mediascape and Movement: The Dynamics of Political Communication, Public and Counterpublic, by Francis Lee 6. Where Have All the Workers Gone? Reflections on the Role of Trade Unions during the Umbrella Movement, by Chris K. C. Chan 7. How Students Took Leadership of the Umbrella Movement: Marginalization of Prodemocracy Parties, by Ming Sing 8. Hong Kong's Hybrid Regime and Its Repertoires, by Edmund Cheng 9. Protest Art, Hong Kong Style: A Photo Essay, by Oscar Ho 10. Taiwan's Sunflower Occupy Movement as a Transformative Resistance to the "China Factor", by Jieh-Min Wu Afterword: Hong Kong's Turn toward Greater Authoritarianism, by Ming Sing

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Book SynopsisThe prewar history of the Japanese intelligence community demonstrates how having power over much, but insight into little can have devastating consequences. Its postwar historyone of limited Japanese power despite growing insighthas also been problematic for national security.In Special Duty Richard J. Samuels dissects the fascinating history of the intelligence community in Japan. Looking at the impact of shifts in the strategic environment, technological change, and past failures, he probes the reasons why Japan has endured such a roller-coaster ride when it comes to intelligence gathering and analysis, and concludes that the ups and downs of the past centurycombined with growing uncertainties in the regional security environmenthave convinced Japanese leaders of the critical importance of striking balance between power and insight. Using examples of excessive hubris and debilitating bureaucratic competition before the Asia-Pacific War, the unavoidable dependence onTrade ReviewFocusing on intelligence gathering by the modern Japanese state from 1895, the author's insights into pre-war "hubris and debilitating bureaucratic competition" and postwar reliance on the U.S. will attract fans of both geopolitical and military history. * Japan Times *This engrossing history of Japanese intelligence demonstrates how such changes have made Japan a better security partner for the United States while preparing the country to stand on its own if the U.S. security guarantee loses its credibility. * Foreign Affairs *A thorough, and thoroughly alarming, treatment of the subject matter, this book is a valuable contribution to the study of intelligence. * Choice *Samuels takes on on the bumpy and at times wacky of journey of Japanese intelligence. [It} provides an excellent, exhaustive insight into that which has gone before, and poses some unsettling questions as to the way forward. It is, indeed, a timely book of great value to policy makers, scholars, and students. * Journal of Military History *Special Duty is an excellent study, meticulously researched and well written. It fills a vital gap in current scholarship, as there is a dearth of reliable historical accounts of Japanese intelligence, especially of the postwar period. The work is essential reading for historians of modern Japan, scholars of intelligence, and any reader interested in the Japanese intelligence community. * Monumenta Nipponica *Samuels has presented an ambitious study of Japanese intelligence. It is a history of expansion, accommodation, tinkering, reimaging, and reengineering. It is the story of the poor political leadership and lack of vision. The result is one of turmoil and change with minimal progress until very recently. Samuels' book is a study of the political process of creating a viable intelligence community – and the price of lacking political leadership. This is an important book that captures an important story of the eventual attempt to develop a Japanese intelligence community. * Intelligence and National Security *Richard Samuels has produced an informative book about the evolution and current state of the Japanese intelligence community. * Survival: Global politics and strategy *Richard Samuels, a professor at MIT and renowned Japanese expert, has written the definitive history of Japan's intelligence community —- or lack thereof. * Global Asia *Special Duty provides, to date, the only comprehensive, single-volume study of the Japanese intelligence community available in English in decades. [It is] a superb volume that stands out for its seamless integration of a wide range of Japanese- and English-language sources into a book that will surely be seen as the defi nitive study of this topic—in any language—for years to come. * The Journal of Japanese Studies *The first significant academic book in English, Samuel's magisterial work on Japan's postwar intelligence community will be the standard work on the subject for years to come. * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1. Driving Intelligence 2. Expanding Special Duties (1895-1945) 3. Accommodating Defeat (1945-1991) 4. Tinkering with Failure (1991-2001) 5. Reimagining Possibilities (2001-2013) 6. Reengineering the Intelligence Community (2013-) 7. The Past and Future of Japanese Intelligence Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisHow do warlords survive and even thrive in contexts that are explicitly set up to undermine them? How do they rise after each fall? Warlord Survival answers these questions. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2018, with ministers, governors, a former vice-president, warlords and their entourages...Trade ReviewMalejacq gives us an extensive, in-depth vision of the political agency of warlords and how they manage to maintain their political authority even in highly challenging (geo)political scenarios. He brings an important and well-grounded interrogation to Western interventionist models of state-building. Moreover, his book has the potential of opening-up the readers' imagination to alternative constructions of political orders and broader perspectives on 'international actors', given his presentation of warlords' skilful diplomacies and strategies towards international politics. * Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding *Malejacq's book impressively illustrates in meticulous detail how understanding warlords as limited to organising violence is a gross mis-representation of their skills and political adaptive potential. * e-International Relations *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Map of areas of relevance Map of Afghanistan provinces Introduction: Why Warlord Survival? Warlords, States, and Political Orders The Game of Survival Ismail Khan, the Armed Notable of Western Afghani stan Dostum, the Ethnic Entrepreneur Massoud and Fahim: The Mujahid and the Violent Entrepreneu Conclusion: Beyond Warlord Survival Notes Index

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Book SynopsisCan Science and Technology Save China? assesses the intimate connections between science and society in China, offering an in-depth look at how an array of sciences and technologies are being made, how they are interfacing with society, and with what effects.Focusing on critical domains of daily life, the chapters explore how scientists, technicians, surgeons, therapists, and other experts create practical knowledges and innovations, as well as how ordinary people take them up as they pursue the good life. Editors Greenhalgh and Zhang offer a rare, up-close view of the politics of Chinese science-making, showing how everyday logics, practices, and ethics of science, medicine, and technology are profoundly reshaping contemporary China. By foregrounding the notion of governing through science, and the contested role of science and technology as instruments of change, this timely book addresses important questions regarding what counts as science in China, what science anTrade ReviewThis is a prescient and impressively coherent collection of essays based on a workshop held at Harvard University in. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the contributors—all but one of whom are anthropologists—address crucial questions about the relationship between science and the party-state, broader issues of governmentality, as well as China's status as a (bio)tech superpower. * China Review International *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Governing through Science: The Anthropology of Science and Technology in Contemporary China, by Susan Greenhalgh 1. Numbers and the Assembling of a Community Mental Health Infrastructure in Postsocialist China, by Zhiying Ma 2. Embracing Psychological Science for the "Good Life"?, by Li Zhang 3. Negotiating Evidence and Efficacy in Experimental Medicine, by Priscilla Song 4. Divergent Trust and Dissonant Truths in Public Health Science, by Katherine A. Mason 5. China's Eco-Dream and the Making of Invisibilities in Rural-Environmental Research, by Elizabeth Lord 6. The Good Scientist and the Good Multinational: Managing the Ethics of Industry-Funded Science, by Susan Greenhalgh 7. The Black Soldier Fly: An Indigenous Innovation for Waste Management in Guangzhou, by Amy Zhang 8. Unmasking a Gendered Materialism: Air Filtration, Cigarettes, and Domestic Discord in Urban China, by Matthew Kohrman Afterword List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisRevolution Goes East is an intellectual history that applies a novel global perspective to the classic story of the rise of communism and the various reactions it provoked in Imperial Japan. Tatiana Linkhoeva demonstrates how contemporary discussions of the Russian Revolution, its containment, and the issue of imperialism played a fundamental role in shaping Japan''s imperial society and state.In this bold approach, Linkhoeva explores attitudes toward the Soviet Union and the communist movement among the Japanese military and politicians, as well as interwar leftist and rightist intellectuals and activists. Her book draws on extensive research in both published and archival documents, including memoirs, newspaper and journal articles, political pamphlets, and Comintern archives. Revolution Goes East presents us with a compelling argument that the interwar Japanese Left replicated the Orientalist outlook of Marxism-Leninism in its relationship with the rest of AsTrade ReviewTatiana Linkhoeva's meticulously detailed Revolution Goes East shows that Japanese responses to Soviet socialism during the 1920s and 30s were no exception to this. Indeed given the country's situation at the time, the diversity of views on the revolution held by various government factions, the military, and society at large was especially diverse. * New Books Network *Revolution Goes East is the first in-depth study in English of the diplomatic and ideological impact of the Bolshevik Revolution on Japan. Linkhoeva's study is a welcome addition to the existing body of scholarship, and is a badly needed corrective to the Eurocentric bias in Western research on the history of Japanese foreign relations. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Japan's foreign policy or in the development of leftist ideologies in early twentieth-century Japan. * The Russian Review *The almost picturesque histories of diplomats, intellectuals and underworld political agents in interwar Japan are all woven together by Linkhoeva's clear and punctual prose in such a way that makes the reader actually curious to know more and dig deeper. Beyond the remarkable historiographical contribution, perhaps the key quality that makes Revolution Goes East such a critical book is the fact that despite all the questions it answers, it is able to raise many new ones. * Japan Society *Revolution Goes East is an important addition to the growing literature on Japanese imperialism and nationalism of the interwar period. It offers a unique angle on this crucial period when the failure of the Japanese left to provide a viable alternative to nationalism and militarism, coupled with the repressions against the vibrant civil society, enabled the rise of nationalist extremism in the 1930s. Its chapters, built on a close and discerning reading of a broad range of Japanese leftist writings, will serve for a long time as go-to texts for scholars and students alike. * The Journal of Japanese Studies *Tatiana Linkhoeva's Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism is the first comprehensive work focusing on an enigma at the heart of the modern history of Japan. Revolution Goes East is indispensable for thinking more deeply about the history of Japan in the frst half of the twentieth century from an international perspective, and for reflecting more carefully on the history of the Soviet Union and communism in the East Asian world. * Japan Review *Revolution Goes East is a welcome addition to the study of both Japanese and Russian foreign policy, and a fruitful discussion of the history of the left in Japan. * Ab Imperio *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Two Russias 1. Before 1917 2. Revolution and Intervention 3. The Anti-Western Revolution 4. Anticommunism Within 5. Anarchism against Bolshevism 6. The Japanese Communist Party and the Comintern 7. National Socialism and Soviet Communism Conclusion: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism in the 1930s

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Book SynopsisSemi-Civilized offers a concise, revealing, and analytically penetrating view of a critical period in Philippine history. Michael C. Hawkins examines Moro (Filipino Muslim) contributions to the Philippine exhibit at the St. Louis World''s Fair in 1904, providing insight into this fascinating and previously overlooked historical episode. By reviving and contextualizing Moro participation in the exposition, Hawkins challenges the typical manifestations of empire drawn from the fair and delivers a nuanced and textured vision of the nature of American imperial discourse. In Semi-Civilized Hawkins argues that the Moro display provided a distinctive liminal space in the dialectical relationship between civilization and savagery at the fair. The Moros offered a transcultural bridge. Through their official yet nondescript designation as semi-civilized, they undermined and mediated the various binaries structuring the exposition. As Hawkins demonstrates, this mediation rTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Complicated and Collaborative Art of Colonial Display 1. Sensational Savages 2. Nostalgia and the Familiar Savage 3. Measuring Moros Conclusion: The Paradox of Preservation and Performative Extinction Epilogue

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewImmigrant Japan is a necessary addition to the bookshelf of contemporary Japan and migration studies scholars, students and everyday persons. Liu-Farrer's work in sharing the voices of immigrants is an invaluable resource for readers who aspire to build a more nuanced understanding of contemporary Japanese society and the immigrants who have long been a part of it. * New Voices in Japanese Studies *In her impressive book, Liu-Farrer draws on interviews with 229 research subjects as well as ethnography, focus group analysis, stories of migrants from secondary literature, and her own experiences as a migrant to and naturalized citizen of Japan to examine how migrants to Japan negotiate issues regarding home and belonging. Liu-Farrer's book is engagingly written, and the stories of her interviewees as well as her ethnographic vignettes are appealing and fun to read. * Monumenta Nipponica *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Japan as an Ethno-nationalist Immigrant Society 1. Immigrating to Japan 2. Migration Channels and the Shaping of Immigrant Ethno-scapes 3. Working in Japan 4. Weaving the Web of a Life in Japan 5. To Leave, to Return 6. Home and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society 7. Children of Immigrants: Educational Mobilities 8. Growing Up in Japan: Identity Journeys Conclusion: Realities, Challenges, and Promises of Immigrant Japan

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAccidental Holy Land is validation that in the right hands these types of state-published collections, despite having undergone unclear processes of editorial curation, can be used to fashion empirically rich and highly original reassessments of the past that undermine both grand narratives and unduly deterministic conclusions. * The University of British Columbia *The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier provides valuable detail on how the party tackled the problem of establishing control in an area culturally, linguistically, economically and politically so different from the interior. Seldom is the veil lifted from Tibet, which makes Weiner's chronicles all the more worth reading. * The Economist *Utilizing never before available documents, Weiner has given us a fascinating, detailed insider's look at the discussions, disagreements, problems, orders, and more during this critical period of consolidation of power and nation-building this important, distinctly written and meticulously documented study provides critical insight into an area and period that we have known far too little about. * Critical Asian Studies *Benno Weiner is undeniably a serious thinker, and The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier is a fascinating and important book. It's going to be a while until the next one of these comes along. * LA Review of Books *A landmark study. Accessibly written, this book will be of value to all students of PRC history and indeed Communist regimes. An impressive and timely achievement. * Twentieth-Century China *Pathbreaking. [A] superb contribution to the literature on the early years of Chinese Communist rule over Tibet. * The Journal of American-East Asian Relations *In The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier, Benno Weiner masterfully reconstructs the CCP's colonial encroachment on the Tibetan-speaking population of Amdo during the 1950s. * Journal of Asian Studies *The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier offers precious insights into a hidden history. * Foreign Affairs *This book will become a must-read overseas in the field of ethnic history of China's periphery. * The China Review *This book is a remarkable contribution to our understanding of this era as state archival material from this period is rarely accessible to researchers. [The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier is] a landmark publication in modern Tibetan history, early PRC history and the history of Chinese nation-building in its frontier regions. This book should be required reading for anybody interested in the history of Sino-Tibetan relations or modern Chinese nation-building. * The London School of Economics and Political Science *Benno Weiner's excellent book makes two main contributions to what we know about the history of the Amdo / Qinghai region in western China. His careful empirical narrativization of the political history of the southern Qinghai highlands from the 1940s to the 1960s is pathbreaking, detailed, and nuanced. Second, his focus on the United Front as a set of ideas and policies similarly establishes a compelling baseline framework for regional and national historical analyses that connect the imperial past, Chinese socialism, and the Xi Jinping present. But Weiner also makes an important contribution to how we ought to think about the region. * Journal of Chinese History *Benno Weiner's The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier is a detailed and powerful account of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attempted to incorporate Tibetans living in Amdo into the newly created Chinese socialist nation-state in the 1950s; Scholars of empire, nationalism and socialism in East Asia and Inner Asia will significantly benefit from reading it. * The China Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Amdo, Empire, and the United Front 1. Amdo at the Edge of Empire 2. If You Kill the County Head, How Will I Explain Itto the Communist Party? 3. Becoming Masters of Their Own Home(under the Leadership of the Party) 4. Establishing a Foundation among the Masses 5. High Tide on the High Plateau 6. Tibetans Do the Housework, but Han Are the Masters 7. Reaching the Sky in a Single Step—The Amdo Rebellion 8. Empty Stomachs and Unforgivable Crimes Conclusion: Amdo and the End of Empire?

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Book SynopsisIntimacy Across the Fencelines examines intimacy in the form of sexual encounters, dating, marriage, and family that involve US service members and local residents. Rebecca Forgash analyzes the stories of individual US service members and their Okinawan spouses and family members against the backdrop of Okinawan history, political and economic entanglements with Japan and the United States, and a longstanding anti-base movement. The narratives highlight the simultaneously repressive and creative power of military fencelines, sites of symbolic negotiation and struggle involving gender, race, and class that divide the social landscape in communities that host US bases.Intimacy Across the Fencelines anchors the global US military complex and US-Japan security alliance in intimate everyday experiences and emotions, illuminating important aspects of the lived experiences of war and imperialism.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Intimate Effects of U.S. Empire 1. International Marriage in Japan's Periphery 2. Race, Memory, and Military Men's Sexuality 3. Living Respectably and Negotiating Class 4. The Marine Corps Marriage Package 5. Creating Family and Community across Military Fencelines Conclusion: On Stories and Silences

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Book SynopsisDoes religion cause violent conflict, asks Chad M. Bauman, and if so, does it cause conflict more than other social identities? Through an extended history of Christian-Hindu relations, with particular attention to the 20072008 riots in Kandhamal, Odisha, Anti-Christian Violence in India examines religious violence and how it pertains to broader aspects of humanity. Is religious conflict sui generis, or is it merely one species of intergroup conflict? Why and how might violence become an attractive option for religious actors? What explains the increase in religious violence over the last twenty to thirty years?Integrating theories of anti-Christian violence focused on politics, economics, and proselytization, Anti-Christian Violence in India additionally weaves in recent theory about globalization and, in particular, the forms of resistance against Western secular modernity that globalization periodically helps to provoke. With such theories in mind, Bauman expTrade ReviewBauman enters deeply into the thinking of Hindu nationalists to show that their acts of violence against Christians are motivated not by disputes over doctrine but by an even more basic clash over the role of religion. * Foreign Affairs *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Anti-Christian Violence in Global Context1. A Socio-cosmological Approach to Anti-Christian Violence2. A Prehistory of Hindu-Christian Conflict3. "Everyday" Anti-Christian Violence4. "Darkness, Loneliness, Loud Noises, and Men": The Riots of Kandhamal, Odisha, 2007–20085. The Social Construction of Kandhamal's ViolenceConclusion: A Geography of Anger

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Book SynopsisIn Imperial Romance, Su Yun Kim argues that the idea of colonial intimacy within the Japanese empire of the early twentieth century had a far broader and more popular influence on discourse makers, social leaders, and intellectuals than previously understood. Kim investigates representations of Korean-Japanese intimate and familial relationshipsincluding romance, marriage, and kinshipin literature, media, and cinema, alongside documents that discuss colonial policies during the Japanese protectorate period and colonial rule in Korea (190545). Focusing on Korean perspectives, Kim uncovers political meaning in the representation of intimacy and emotion between Koreans and Japanese portrayed in print media and films. Imperial Romance disrupts the conventional reading of colonial-period texts as the result of either coercion or the disavowal of colonialism, thereby expanding our understanding of colonial writing practices. The theme of intermarriage gave elite Korean writeTrade ReviewKim provides fresh interpretations of such writers as Yŏm Sangsŏp and Yi Kwangsu by offering new readings of the domestic settings in their works, which explore how they redefined and re-created a new kind of social order among their characters. * Choice *Imperial Romance contains a concise analysis of selected Korean literary and media texts that include the themes of intermarriage and romance. Su Yun Kim's Imperial Romance presents the beginnings of an exciting conversation and prepares us to ask further questions regarding race, love, and romance, whilst evaluating not only the past, but the contemporary moment of globalization. * International Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Imperial Romance 1. Civilization and Enlightenment: The Role of the Japanese Home in the Early Colonial Period, 1905–1919 2. Under the Same Roof: A Royal Wedding and a Mixed Family for the Ruling Class 3. Wartime Ideology and the Integration of Korean-Japanese Mixed Families, 1930s 4. Romance and Colonial Universalism 5. Visualizing "International" and Korean-Japanese Marriage in Print Media Epilogue: Postcolonial Interracial Intimacy

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Book SynopsisDanna Agmon''s gripping microhistory is a vivid guide to the Nayiniyappa Affair in the French colony of Pondicherry, India. The surprising and shifting fates of Nayiniyappa and his family form the basis of this story of global mobilization, which is replete with merchants, missionaries, local brokers, government administrators, and even the French royal family.Agmon''s compelling account draws readers into the social, economic, religious, and political interactions that defined the European colonial experience in India and elsewhere. Her portrayal of imperial sovereignty in France''s colonies as it played out in the life of one beleaguered family allows readers to witness interactions between colonial officials and locals.Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.Trade ReviewRevisiting an often forgotten scandal in an obscure corner of France's eighteenth-century empire—the Nayiniyappa Affair and Pondichéry, respectively—Agmon draws our attention to the shifting dynamic of conflict and collaboration that underlay the French imperial project in India. The result is a valuable reminder of the contested nature of early modern colonial power, all set against a compelling backdrop of personal tragedy and posthumous redemption.... [C]ompellingly argued and beautifully written. * H-France Reviews *Because Agmon has carefully, cogently, and insightfully analyzed the events and significance of Nayiniyappa's trial, readers might find themselves impelled to read A Colonial Affair from cover to cover at one sitting! * International Bulletin of Mission Research *Agmon's prose is sophisticated, clear and flowing, and she successfully guides the reader through all of the affair's complexities. * French Review *Danna Agmon peels back the layers of this fascinating series of events with consummate skill; she has the sure touch of a historian whose confidence is well earned.... As with any microhistory, the ultimate test is whether the story told opens new perspectives on broader themes. By this criterion, Agmon has passed with flying colors. * Journal of Modern History *This book is strong on the internal tensions of early French rule in India.... Agmon ably conveys the sense of a transitional period between a relationship of commercial equals [between the French and indigenous intermediaries] to one of colonial master and servant.... [A] welcome addition to the history of French India [and]... a fascinating glimpse into an early French colonial period when Catholic conversion was the stamp of trust. * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments The Actors Introduction Part One 1. The Elusive Origins of a Colonial Scandal 2. Kinship as Politics Part Two 3. The Denial of Language 4. Conflict at Court Part Three 5. Between Paris and Pondichéry 6. Archiving the Affair Epilgoue Notes Index

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Book SynopsisCan a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire? Studying closely the oral narrations and writings of four Indian authors in colonial India, The Audacious Raconteur argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress audacious raconteurs: skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation. By drawing attention to the vigorous orality, maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and bilingualism in the narratives of these raconteurs, Leela Prasad shows how the ideological bulwark of colonialismformed by concepts of colonial modernity, history, science, and native knowledgeis dismantled. Audacious raconteurs wrest back meanings of religion, culture, and history that are closer to their lived understandings. The figure of the audacious raconteur does not only hover in an archive but suffuses everyday life. Underlying these ideas, Prasad''Trade Review[A] charming retelling of Hanuman's visit to Lanka[...] her insightful studies of her four subjects at times suggest to me a more complex and equivocal relationship with colonial ideology and its hegemonic language. * Journal of the American Oriental Society *Table of ContentsIntroduction: "That Acre of Ground" 1. The Ruse of Colonial Modernity: Anna Liberata de Souza 2. The History of the English Empire as a Fall: P. V. Ramaswami Raju 3. The Subjective Scientific Method: M. N. Venkataswami 4. The Irony of the "Native Scholar": S. M. Natesa Sastri Conclusion: The Sovereign Self

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Book SynopsisCinema and the Cultural Cold War explores the ways in which postwar Asian cinema was shaped by transnational collaborations and competitions between newly independent and colonial states at the height of Cold War politics. Sangjoon Lee adopts a simultaneously global and regional approach when analyzing the region''s film cultures and industries. New economic conditions in the Asian region and shared postwar experiences among the early cinema entrepreneurs were influenced by Cold War politics, US cultural diplomacy, and intensified cultural flows during the 1950s and 1960s. By taking a closer look at the cultural realities of this tumultuous period, Lee comprehensively reconstructs Asian film history in light of the international relationships forged, broken, and re-established as the influence of the non-aligned movement grew across the Cold War.Lee elucidates how motion picture executives, creative personnel, policy makers, and intellectuals in East and Southeast AsiaTrade ReviewCinema and the Cultural Cold War expertly utilizes rich archival material to tell a compelling story about cinema in Asia during the Cold War that describes the complexity of the film business and the myriad risks and failures. Read alongside other works such as Day and Liem (2010) and Shaw (2007), Lee's study is ground-breaking. It is a book for researchers and film historians, but also a highly readable story about the history of Cold War cinema. * South East Asia Research *Sang Joon Lee's study is in concordance with his other books and will be highly useful for academics and researchers in the field of Asian cultural politics. Readers will benefit from Lee's deep knowledge of cross-cultural interchange through the Asian cinema network. * Insight Turkey *Extensive archival research undergirds this first-rate analysis. The volume offers an excellent history of postwar Asian cinema in and of itself, but Lee's close analysis of the challenges of international coproduction and the development of a truly transnational Asian cinema in what he terms the First and Second Networks of Asian cinema elevates the volume and results in an original exploration of the relationship between cinematic production and the US's attempts to maintain dominance in the region. An important study. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Cultural Cold War and the Birth of the AsianCinema Network Part I: The First Network 1. The Asia Foundation's Motion Picture Project 2. The FPA, US Propaganda, and Postwar Japanese Cinema 3. It's Oscar Time in Asia! 4. Constructing the Anticommunist Producers' Alliance 5. Projecting Asian Cinema to the World Part II: The Second Network 6. The Rise and Demise of a Developmental State Studio 7. Hong Kong, Hollywood, and the End of the Network Epilogue: From Asia to Asia-Pacific

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Book SynopsisIn the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an encounter of wits. China and the End of Global Silver, 18731937 focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency. As different governments in China attempted to create a unified monetary standard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the United States, England, and Japan tried to shape the direction of Chinese monetary reform for their owTable of ContentsIntroduction: Following the Money 1. A Primer on the Qing Dynasty Monetary System 2. Silver Begins Its Fall: The Global Circulations of the U.S. Trade Dollar, 1873–1887 3. Provincial Silver Coins and the Fragmenting Chinese Monetary System, 1887–1900 4. The Gold-Exchange Standard and Imperial Competition in China, 1901–1905 5. Money and Power on the World's Last "Silver Frontier": The Currency Reform and Development Loan, 1910–1924 6. The Shanghai Mint and Establishing a Silver Standard in China, 1920–1933 7. The Fabi and the End of the Global Silver Era, 1933–1937 Conclusion: Reflections on the End of Global Silver

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Book SynopsisBlack Market Business is a grassroots social history of the clandestine market for sex in colonial Tonkin. Lively and well told, it explores the ways in which sex workers, managers, and clients evaded the colonial regulation system in the turbulent economy of the interwar years. Christina Elizabeth Firpo argues that the confluence of economic, demographic, and cultural changes sweeping late colonial Tonkin created spaces of tension in which the interwar black market sex industry thrived. The clandestine sex industry flourished in sites of legal inconsistency, cultural changes, economic disparity, rural-urban division, and demographic shifts. As a nexus of the many tensions besetting late colonial Tonkin, the black market sex industry serves as a useful lens through which to examine these tensions and the ways they affected marginalized populations. More specifically, an investigation of this black market shows how a particular population of impoverished womena group regrettabTrade ReviewFirpo (California Polytechnic State Univ.), author of The Uprooted: Race, Childhood, and Imperialism in Indochina, 1890–1980, provocatively argues that French colonial rule gave rise to a black market for sex in Northern Vietnam. * Choice *Christina Firpo's latest book is a lively social history of the black market sex industry in late French colonial northern Vietnam, known then as Tonkin (1920–45). Black Market Business is an absorbing historical study[.][T]his rigorously researched study testifies to Firpo's high scholarly calibre. Accessibly and lucidly written, the book will be of interest to general readers, students and scholars alike from many disciplines, including anthropology, criminology, law, literature and cultural studies, as well as gender and sexuality studies. * Sojourn *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Late Colonial Vietnam and the Development of the Black Market 1. The Geography of Vice: Spatial Dimensions of Clandestine Sex Wor 2. Venereal Diseases: Policing the Sources of Infection 3. Unfree Labor: Debt Bondage and Human Trafficking 4. Adolescent Sex Work: Poverty and Its Effects on Children 5. Đào Singers: New Ways to Police Female Performance Art 6. Taxi Dancers: Western Culture and the Urban-Rural Divide Conclusion: Patterns of Clandestine Sex Industries into the Postcolonial Era

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Book SynopsisDisruptions of Daily Life explores the mass media landscape of early twentieth century in order to uncover the subversive societal impact of four major Japanese authors: Tanizaki Jun''ichiro, Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari, and Hirabayashi Taiko. Arthur Mitchell examines this literature against global realities through a modernist lens, studying an alternative modernism that challenges the Western European model.Through broad surveys of discussions surrounding Japanese life in the 1920s, Mitchell locates and examines flourishing divergent ideologies of the early twentieth century such as gender, ethnicity, and nationalism. He unravels how the narrative and linguistic strategies of modernist texts interrogated the innocence of this language, disrupting their hold on people''s imagined relationship to daily life. These modernist works often discursively displaced the authority of their own claims by inadvertently exposing the global epistemology of East vs. West. MiTrade ReviewDisruptions of Daily Life is a lucid and insightful contribution to the growing scholarship on Japanese modernism. * Monumenta Nipponica *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Shattering the Status Quo: Reading Modernism in the Early Twentieth Century 1. Fetishism of the West in Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's A Fool's Love 2. Subversions of Ethnicity in Yokomitsu Riichi's Neo-Sensationist Writings 3. Kawabata Yasunari's The Scarlet Gang of Asakusaand the Narrative of the Present 4. "Love" and (Male) Subjectivity in Hirabayashi Taiko's "In the Charity Ward" Coda: Against the National Literary Narrative

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWang's thought-provoking study of erotic media markets in Beijing from the 1880s to the 1930s breaks new ground by effectively bridging elite discourses and mass consumption and grounding the discussion within the context of indigenous practices and technologies. * Choice *This volume's concerns reach far beyond eroticism and sexuality. It explores the shifting power structures and cultural politics behind the "global modern pornographic turn" of which China was a part as it emerged at the turn of the twentieth century (14-17, 44, 202). * Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews *Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Chinese History of Pornographic Modernity 1. Challenging Yin Hierarchy: Late Imperial Antecedents of the Global Modern Pornographic Turn Part One: A Globalizing Market Transforms Sexual Representations 2. Commodifying Licentiousness in a Time of Flux: The Material Dimensions of Global Modern Pornography 3. The Implied Masturbator Speaks: Technologies and Markets Catalyze Transformations in Yin Ideology Part Two: Global Modern Pornography Raises Reactions and Contradictions 4. Sex(ology) Sells: The Marketplace Assimilates Global Modern Innovations 5. Plus c'est la même chose: Reinventing Licentiousness for a New Age Conclusion: From Yin to "Yellow"

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Book SynopsisReworking Japan examines how the past several decades of neoliberal economic restructuring and reforms have challenged Japan''s corporate ideologies, gendered relations, and subjectivities of individual employees. With Japan''s remarkable economic growth since the 1950s, the lifestyles and life courses of salarymen came to embody the New Middle Class family ideal. However, the nearly three decades of economic stagnation and reforms since the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s has intensified corporate retrenchment under the banner of neoliberal restructuring and brought new challenges to employees and their previously protected livelihoods. In a sweeping appraisal of recent history, Gagné demonstrates how economic restructuring has reshaped Japanese corporations, workers, and ideals, as well as how Japanese companies and employees have resisted and actively responded to such changes.Gagné explores Japan''s fraught and problematic transition from the posTrade ReviewThe book's main value lies in its detailed accounts of men's careers and life courses, which provide some instructive illustrations of typical (successful) white-collar career arcs. * ILR Review *The combination of sites enabled the author to construct multidimensional portraits which would have been difficult with a single-site method. Indeed, these portraits are very vibrant. The second part offers a fascinating account of the informants outside work. The strengths of the book lie in the genuineness of the men's accounts, which undoubtedly reflect a rapport the author was able to create with them. * The Journal of Japanese Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1. LOCATING SALARYMEN, CAPITALISM, AND NEOLIBERALISM IN JAPAN 1. Historicizing Japanese Workers and Japanese Capitalism 2. Working in and Working on Neoliberalism Part 2. AFTER WORK, BEYOND LEISURE, AND INDIVIDUAL DESIRES 3. The Business of Leisure, the Leisure of Business 4. Working Hard at Having Fun through Hobbies and Community Part 3. MULTIPLICITIES OF MEN 5. Escaping the Corporate Shackles 6. Navigating the Waves of Work and Life 7. Weathering the Storms of Corporate Restructuring Conclusion

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Book SynopsisIn 2012, Cambodiaan epicenter of violent land grabbingannounced a bold new initiative to develop land redistribution efforts inside agribusiness concessions. Alice Beban''s Unwritten Rule focuses on this land reform to understand the larger nature of democracy in Cambodia. Beban contends that the national land-titling program, the so-called leopard skin land reform, was first and foremost a political campaign orchestrated by the world''s longest-serving prime minister, Hun Sen. The reform aimed to secure the loyalty of rural voters, produce modern farmers, and wrest control over land distribution from local officials. Through ambiguous legal directives and unwritten rules guiding the allocation of land, the government fostered uncertainty and fear within local communities. Unwritten Rule gives pause both to celebratory claims that land reform will enable land tenure security, and to critical claims that land reform will enmesh rural people mTrade ReviewBeban's book provides a valuable and detailed account of Hun Sen's Order 01 land-titling initiative. Each chapter begins with a thought-provoking vignette and references to relevant theoretical literature. Unwritten Rule will be required reading for anyone interested in the politics of land in Cambodia. * The Developing Economies *This new book by Beban presents a granular, almost journalistic, account of how land reform and other government policies have affected Cambodia's rural population in recent years.[T]here is much to learn here about how the particular policies of Cambodia's authoritarian government impact the country's rural inhabitants[.] * Choice *Table of Contents1. Introduction 2. Donor-State Partnerships in the Cambodian Land Sector 3. Encountering the Leopard Skin Land Reform 4. Reconfiguring Local Authority through Land Reform 5. Youth Volunteers to the Frontier 6. Life in the Leopard Skin 7. Communal Land Struggles in the Wake of the Land Reform 8. An Ontology of Land Beyond State-Capital Formations 9. Conclusion

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Book SynopsisDisaffected examines the effects of antisedition law on the overlapping public spheres of India and Britain under empire. After 1857, the British government began censoring the press in India, culminating in 1870 with the passage of Section 124a, a law that used the term disaffection to target the emotional tenor of writing deemed threatening to imperial rule. As a result, Tanya Agathocleous shows, Indian journalists adopted modes of writing that appeared to mimic properly British styles of prose even as they wrote against empire. Agathocleous argues that Section 124a, which is still used to quell political dissent in present-day India, both irrevocably shaped conversations and critiques in the colonial public sphere and continues to influence anticolonialism and postcolonial relationships between the state and the public. Disaffected draws out the coercive and emotional subtexts of law, literature, and cultural relationships, demonstrating Trade ReviewThrough detailed case studies of the periodical press in both Britain and India, Agathocleous compellingly explains how the redefinition of sedition—in terms of loyalty and disaffection—shaped both imperial power in late colonial period and the contours of Indian nationalism. In her careful attention to the circulation of periodicals, in the difficult work she has done in the vast archive of colonial print, and in creating a genuinely comparative theoretical framing, Agathocleous has provided scholars with a truly valuable resource. * Review 19 *Disaffected offers an intricate, dynamic account of the way legal culture works far beyond the remit of a legal statute with effects again, intended and unintended evident in our own legal cultures today. [It] is an exemplary work of legal cultural studies. * Modern Philology *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Affectation: The Aesthete and the Babu on Trial 2. Parody: Colonial Mimicry, Colonial Parody, and theMultiplicity of Punch 3. Review: Worlding White Supremacy and Indian Nationalism 4. Syncretism: From East and West to the Darker Nations Conclusion

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Book SynopsisCinema and the Cultural Cold War explores the ways in which postwar Asian cinema was shaped by transnational collaborations and competitions between newly independent and colonial states at the height of Cold War politics. Sangjoon Lee adopts a simultaneously global and regional approach when analyzing the region''s film cultures and industries. New economic conditions in the Asian region and shared postwar experiences among the early cinema entrepreneurs were influenced by Cold War politics, US cultural diplomacy, and intensified cultural flows during the 1950s and 1960s. By taking a closer look at the cultural realities of this tumultuous period, Lee comprehensively reconstructs Asian film history in light of the international relationships forged, broken, and re-established as the influence of the non-aligned movement grew across the Cold War.Lee elucidates how motion picture executives, creative personnel, policy makers, and intellectuals in East and Southeast AsiaTrade ReviewCinema and the Cultural Cold War expertly utilizes rich archival material to tell a compelling story about cinema in Asia during the Cold War that describes the complexity of the film business and the myriad risks and failures. Read alongside other works such as Day and Liem (2010) and Shaw (2007), Lee's study is ground-breaking. It is a book for researchers and film historians, but also a highly readable story about the history of Cold War cinema. * South East Asia Research *Sang Joon Lee's study is in concordance with his other books and will be highly useful for academics and researchers in the field of Asian cultural politics. Readers will benefit from Lee's deep knowledge of cross-cultural interchange through the Asian cinema network. * Insight Turkey *Extensive archival research undergirds this first-rate analysis. The volume offers an excellent history of postwar Asian cinema in and of itself, but Lee's close analysis of the challenges of international coproduction and the development of a truly transnational Asian cinema in what he terms the First and Second Networks of Asian cinema elevates the volume and results in an original exploration of the relationship between cinematic production and the US's attempts to maintain dominance in the region. An important study. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Cultural Cold War and the Birth of the AsianCinema Network Part I: The First Network 1. The Asia Foundation's Motion Picture Project 2. The FPA, US Propaganda, and Postwar Japanese Cinema 3. It's Oscar Time in Asia! 4. Constructing the Anticommunist Producers' Alliance 5. Projecting Asian Cinema to the World Part II: The Second Network 6. The Rise and Demise of a Developmental State Studio 7. Hong Kong, Hollywood, and the End of the Network Epilogue: From Asia to Asia-Pacific

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Book SynopsisIn 2012, Cambodiaan epicenter of violent land grabbingannounced a bold new initiative to develop land redistribution efforts inside agribusiness concessions. Alice Beban''s Unwritten Rule focuses on this land reform to understand the larger nature of democracy in Cambodia. Beban contends that the national land-titling program, the so-called leopard skin land reform, was first and foremost a political campaign orchestrated by the world''s longest-serving prime minister, Hun Sen. The reform aimed to secure the loyalty of rural voters, produce modern farmers, and wrest control over land distribution from local officials. Through ambiguous legal directives and unwritten rules guiding the allocation of land, the government fostered uncertainty and fear within local communities. Unwritten Rule gives pause both to celebratory claims that land reform will enable land tenure security, and to critical claims that land reform will enmesh rural people mTrade ReviewBeban's book provides a valuable and detailed account of Hun Sen's Order 01 land-titling initiative. Each chapter begins with a thought-provoking vignette and references to relevant theoretical literature. Unwritten Rule will be required reading for anyone interested in the politics of land in Cambodia. * The Developing Economies *This new book by Beban presents a granular, almost journalistic, account of how land reform and other government policies have affected Cambodia's rural population in recent years.[T]here is much to learn here about how the particular policies of Cambodia's authoritarian government impact the country's rural inhabitants[.] * Choice *Table of Contents1. Introduction 2. Donor-State Partnerships in the Cambodian Land Sector 3. Encountering the Leopard Skin Land Reform 4. Reconfiguring Local Authority through Land Reform 5. Youth Volunteers to the Frontier 6. Life in the Leopard Skin 7. Communal Land Struggles in the Wake of the Land Reform 8. An Ontology of Land Beyond State-Capital Formations 9. Conclusion

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Book SynopsisStitching the 24-Hour City reveals the intense speed of garment production and everyday life in Dongdaemun, a lively market in Seoul, South Korea. Once the site of uprisings against oppressive working conditions in the 1970s and 1980s, Dongdaemun has now become iconic for its creative economy, nightlife, fast-fashion factories, and shopping plazas. Seo Young Park follows the work of people who witnessed and experienced the rapidly changing marketplace from the inside. Through this approach, Park examines the meanings and politics of work in one of the world''s most vibrant and dynamic global urban marketplaces.Park brings readers into close contact with the garment designers, workers, and traders who sustain the extraordinary speed of fast-fashion production and circulation, as well as the labor activists who challenge it. Attending to their narratives and practices of work, Park argues that speed, rather than being a singular drive of accelerationTrade ReviewEminently readable for anyone interested in the production side of fast fashion, regardless of geographic field. * Choice *I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in urban ethnography of labour, temporality, affect and spaces. This book offers fascinating stories and compelling analyses that illuminate affective and embodied time-geographies of labour. * Urban Studies *Table of ContentsPrologue Introduction Part 1: SPEED AS EXPERIENCE 1. Affective Crowds and Making the 24-Hour City 2. Intimate Networks 3. Passionate Imitation Part 2: PROBLEMATIZATION OF SPEED 4. Redirecting the Future 5. Pacing the Flow Conclusion

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Book SynopsisMeritocracy and Its Discontents investigates the wider social, political, religious, and economic dimensions of the Gaokao, China''s national college entrance exam, as well as the complications that arise from its existence. Each year, some nine million high school seniors in China take the Gaokao, which determines college admission and provides a direct but difficult route to an urban lifestyle for China''s hundreds of millions of rural residents. But with college graduates struggling to find good jobs, some are questioning the exam''s legitimacyand, by extension, the fairness of Chinese society. Chronicling the experiences of underprivileged youth, Zachary M. Howlett''s research illuminates how people remain captivated by the exam because they regard it as fatefulan event both consequential and undetermined. He finds that the exam enables people both to rebel against the social hierarchy and to achieve recognition within it. In Meritocracy andTrade Review[Meritocracy and Its Discontents] contributes an important new perspective to the theoretical discussion on what drives the myth of meritocracy, or the machine of misrecognition. Howlett's book is empirically rich, theoretically sophisticated, and very timely to the situation facing China and the world in this historical moment. * Developing Economies *Table of Contents1. A Fateful Rite of Passage: The Gaokao and the Myth of Meritocracy 2. Mobility, Time, and Value: The High Stakes of Examinationand the Ideology of Developmentalism 3. Counterfeit Fairness: State Secrets and the False Confidence of Test Takers 4. Diligence versus Quality: Merit, Inequality, and Urban Hegemony 5. Courage under Fire: The Paradoxical Role of Head Teachers and the Individualizing Moment of Examination 6. MagicandMeritocracy: Popular-ReligiousResponses to Examination Anxiety Epilogue: Lost and Confused

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Book SynopsisIn The Future Conditional, Eric S. Henry brings twelve-years of expertise and research to offer a nuanced discussion of the globalization of the English language and the widespread effects it has had on Shenyang, the capital and largest city of China''s northeast Liaoning Province. Adopting an ethnographic and linguistic perspective, Henry considers the personal connotations that English, has for Chinese people, beyond its role in the education system. Through research on how English is spoken, taught, and studied in China, Henry considers what the language itself means to Chinese speakers. How and why, he asks, has English become so deeply fascinating in contemporary China, simultaneously existing as a source of desire and anxiety? The answer, he suggests, is that English-speaking Chinese consider themselves distinctly separate from those who do not speak the language, the result of a cultural assumption that speaking English makes a person modern. <Trade ReviewA solid ethnography, useful to anyone teaching languages. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The English Modern 1. Dirty Talk: Hybrid Registers of Chinese and English 2. The Moral Economy of Walls: Recursive Enclosure and Linguistic Space 3. Better to Die Abroad Than to Live in China: Narratives of Life and Learning 4. Commodifying Language: The Business of English in Shenyang 5. On "Chinglish": Stigmatization, Laughter, and Nostalgia 6. Raciolinguistic Identities: The White Foreign Body of the Native English Speaker Conclusion: Reflections on a Global Language

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewCastro-Woodhouse brings to life Rasami and the other consorts who are otherwise flattened by historical accounts. * Choice *Table of Contents1. Introducing Lan Na, Siam, and the Inland Constellation 2. Dara Rasami's Career in the Siamese Royal Palace 3. Performing Identity and Ethnicity in the Siamese Court 4. Inventing Lan Na Tradition and Dara Rasami's Legacy 5. Intertwined Fates: Monarchy, Women's Bodies, and the Thai State

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Book SynopsisIn Republicanism, Communism, Islam, John T. Sidel provides an alternate vantage point for understanding the variegated forms and trajectories of revolution across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, a perspective that is de-nationalized, internationalized, and transnationalized. Sidel positions this new vantage point against the conventional framing of revolutions in modern Southeast Asian history in terms of a nationalist template, on the one hand, and distinctive local cultures and forms of consciousness, on the other. Sidel's comparative analysis shows howin very different, decisive, and often surprising waysthe Philippine, Indonesian, and Vietnamese revolutions were informed, enabled, and impelled by diverse cosmopolitan connections and international conjunctures. Sidel addresses the role of Freemasonry in the making of the Philippine revolution, the importance of Communism and Islam in Indonesia's Revolusi, and the influence that shifting political currents in China and anticolonial movements in Africa had on Vietnamese revolutionaries. Through this assessment, Republicanism, Communism, and Islam tracks how these forces, rather than nationalism per se, shaped the forms of these revolutions, the ways in which they unfolded, and the legacies which they left in their wakes.Trade ReviewJohn T. Sidel's Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia provides an incisive account of the most prominent anticolonial revolutions in Southeast Asia - the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam - from a rigorous comparative perspective. This book is an invaluable addition to the existing scholarship on Southeast Asian history. * The London School of Economics and Political Science *John Sidel succeeds in making us rethink nationalism itself. In fact, he achieves even more than what he explicitly attempts; he's moved us a quantum leap forward in out understanding of the international drivers of Southeast Asia's nationailst revolutions. * SOJOURN - Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Beyond Nationalism and Revolution in Southeast Asia 1. From Bohemia to Balintawak: Cosmopolitan Origins of the Philippine Revolution 2. Masonería, Cofradía, Katipunan: Revolutionary Brotherhoods in the Philippines, 1896–1901 3. From Baku to Bandung: Cosmopolitan Origins of the Indonesian Revolution 4. From Cultuurstelsel to Komedie Stamboel: The Long Nineteenth Century in the Indies 5. Newspapers, Rallies, Strikes: The Rise and Fall of Sarekat Islam (SI), 1912–1926 6. Soekarno and the Promise of NASAKOM: From Rust en Orde through the Pacific War, 1926–1945 7. Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Revolusi, 1945–1949 8. From Guangzhou, Porto Novo, and Antananarivo toward Đin Biên Ph 9. From Cn Vng to Viêt-Nam Duy-Tân Hi to Thanh Niên 10. From Thanh Niên to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) and the Vit Minh Conclusion: Commonalities, Comparisons, Conclusions

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Book SynopsisStitching the 24-Hour City reveals the intense speed of garment production and everyday life in Dongdaemun, a lively market in Seoul, South Korea. Once the site of uprisings against oppressive working conditions in the 1970s and 1980s, Dongdaemun has now become iconic for its creative economy, nightlife, fast-fashion factories, and shopping plazas. Seo Young Park follows the work of people who witnessed and experienced the rapidly changing marketplace from the inside. Through this approach, Park examines the meanings and politics of work in one of the world''s most vibrant and dynamic global urban marketplaces.Park brings readers into close contact with the garment designers, workers, and traders who sustain the extraordinary speed of fast-fashion production and circulation, as well as the labor activists who challenge it. Attending to their narratives and practices of work, Park argues that speed, rather than being a singular drive of accelerationTrade ReviewEminently readable for anyone interested in the production side of fast fashion, regardless of geographic field. * Choice *I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in urban ethnography of labour, temporality, affect and spaces. This book offers fascinating stories and compelling analyses that illuminate affective and embodied time-geographies of labour. * Urban Studies *Table of ContentsPrologue Introduction Part 1: SPEED AS EXPERIENCE 1. Affective Crowds and Making the 24-Hour City 2. Intimate Networks 3. Passionate Imitation Part 2: PROBLEMATIZATION OF SPEED 4. Redirecting the Future 5. Pacing the Flow Conclusion

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