Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award This book comprises contributions from a distinguished group of international researchers who examine the historical development of “new women" and “good wife, wise mother,” women’s roles in socialist and transitional modernity and the transnational migration of both domestic and sex workers as well as wives.
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award: "Kyoto University (Japan) sociologists Ochiai (with Barbara Molony, Asia's New Mothers, 2008) and Aoyama (Thai Migrant Sexworkers, 2009) have compiled a formidable volume on the construction of Asian women as skillful at intimate work, and how women live within this construction. The study stands out for its elucidation of the viewpoints of Asian women engaged in intimate labor, which the contributors define and investigate in capitalist and postsocialist states. Sociologists based in Asia and writing in Asian languages (translated into English) contribute 11 chapters that explore intimate work in India, China, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and Holland. The book's three parts cover the historical formation of intimate work, the emergence and transformation of the ideal image of Asian women as good wives and wise mothers, and the international migration of Asian women. The forms of intimate work treated include housework, sex work, elder care, childcare, and marital duties. Much of this labor occurs transnationally as well as, increasingly, within Asia. Authors underscore the fact that more than half of all international labor migrants are women, the majority of whom engage in intimate work, which makes this volume an important addition to the scholarship. Summing Up: Essential.Upper-division undergraduates and above." -T. L. Loos, Cornell University [This review appeared in the February 2014 issue of Choice. Copyright 2014 American Library Association]
Table of ContentsList of Figures, Photographs and Tables ... vii Introduction: Intimate Work and the Construction of Asian Women ... 1 OCHIAI Emiko PART ONE IMAGINING INTIMATE WORK 1. Housewives’ Work / Mothers’ Work: The Changing Position of Housework in Dutch Society ... 37 NAKATANI Ayami 2. The “Housewife” and Housework in the Indian Urban Middle Classes ... 63 OSHIKAWA Fumiko PART TWO MULTIPLE FACES OF THE GOOD WIFE/WISE MOTHER 3. Troubles of the “New Women” in the Emergence of Modern Korea: Focusing on the Interrelationship between “Women’s Liberation” and the Image of “Wise Mother and Good Wife” ... 93 SUH Ji Young 4. Selling Modernity: Housewives as Portrayed in Yuefenpai (Calendar Posters) and Magazine Advertisements in Shanghai of the 1920s and 1930s ... 107 WU Yongmei 5. The Gender Norms of Chinese Women in the Transitional Market Economy: Research Interviews with Wives in Three Urban Centers ... 139 ZHENG Yang 6. “To be Good at Public and Domestic Work, I Need Three Heads and Six Hands”: The Dilemma of Vietnamese “Modern” Women ... 167 KHUAT Thu Hong, BUI Thu Huong and LE Bach Duong PART THREE WIVES AND WORKERS CROSSING BORDERS 7. From Farmers’ Daughters to Foreign Wives: Marriage, Migration and Gender in the Sending Communities of Vietnam ... 191 Danièle BÉLANGER and TRAN Giang Linh, with LE Bach Duong and KHUAT Thu Hong 8. Commercially Arranged Marriage Migration: The Agency and Inner Struggle of Chinese Women ... 217 HAO Hongfang 9. Strategies of Resistance among Filipina and Indonesian Domestic Workers in Singapore ... 239 UENO Kayoko 10. Moving from Modernisation to Globalisation: Migrant Sex Workers in Japan ... 263 AOYAMA Kaoru 11. The Role of Multicultural Families in South Korean Immigration Policy ... 289 LEE Hye-kyung Index ... 313
