Books in the Asia/Pacific/Perspectives series

Bringing together the work of distinguished China historians, anthropologists, and literary and film scholars, Gender in Motion raises provocative questions about the diversity of gender practices during the late imperial society and the persistence and transformation of older gender ideologies under the conditions of modernity in China. While several studies have investigated gender or labor in late imperial and twentieth century China, this book brings these two concepts together, asking how these two categories interacted and produced new social practices and theories. Individual chapters examine agricultural and urban work, travel within China, overseas study, polyandry, the acting profession, courtesan culture, female politicians, Maoist work culture, and the boundaries of virtue and respectability.Governing notions of the social order (and interrelated constructions of gender) changed radically in the modern eraΓÇöinitially with the questioning of the imperial, dynastic order and the creation of a Chinese republic in the early twentieth century, later with the creation of a Communist government and, most recently, with China''s political and cultural transformations in the post-Mao era. As ideas and practices of gender have changed, the persistence of older rhetorical signs in the interstices of new political visions has complicated the social projects and understandings of modernity, especially in terms of the creation of new public spaces, new concepts of work and virtue, and new configurations of gender.Contributions by: Madeleine Yue Dong, Bryna Goodman, Gail Hershatter, Ellen R. Judd, Joan Judge, Wendy Larson, Susan Mann, Kenneth L. Pomeranz, Tze-lan Deborah Sang, Matthew H. Sommer, Luo Suwen, Catherine Vance Yeh, and Wang Zheng.

Features a study of the Indonesian presidency, which aims to redefine the understanding of Indonesian politics since its independence. This study shows how Indonesia's constitution provided for the personal rule of presidents Sukarno and Soeharto, and then facilitated the shift towards constitutional rule that marked other presidencies.

Focusing on poverty and class in its analysis of social movements, this work shows how social movements have had to change because poverty reduction did not serve its role as a political template. It includes chapters on gender, lower castes, environment, the Hindu Right, Kerala, labor, farmers, and biotechnology.

This is study and analysis of social and political change in the Taihang Base Area during the key years of the War of Resistance to Japan, which was instrumental to the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

By focusing on such controversies and conflicts as the status of women, relations between the sexes, class antagonisms and the growth of a commercial mass culture, this book offers a new interpretation of the key decade of the 1920s and its significance for contemporary Thailand.

Using the field of genetics as a case study, this text follows the troubled development of modern natural science in China from the 1920s, through Mao's China, to the present post-socialist era.

This book offers the first history of the rediscovery of a UNESCO World Heritage site in China, Longmen's caves and the Buddhist statuary of Luoyang. Drawing on fieldwork and archival sources, Wang traces the ties between cultural heritage and modernity, unraveling how this historical monument has been understood from antiquity to the present.

This pathbreaking study of North Korea's political history and culture sheds invaluable light on the country's unique leadership continuity and succession. The authors show how, in defiance of the instability of most revolutionary states, the durability of charismatic politics in North Korea defines its exceptional place in global politics.

Offers exploration of the social, economic, political, legal, and practical parameters of crime and control, locating them within a broader milieu of turbulent development and transition. This volume is useful for those interested in modern and contemporary Chinese politics, law, and society, as well as in comparative criminology and law.

The May 1980 Kwangju Uprising still exerts a profound influence in Korean society. Combining personal reflections and academic analysis, this text offers an examination of the multiple meanings of this event, explaining how the memory of Kwangju has affected Korean life from politics to culture.

Provides an introduction to the cultural and political dimensions of contemporary Chinese cinema. This book explores the world of Chinese underground and independent film, leading Western and Chinese scholars trace the changing dynamics of Chinese film culture. It is for those interested in a society caught between socialism and global currents.

This seminal study explores the significant changes in the global IT industry as production has shifted from the developed world to massive sites in the developing world that house hundreds of thousands of workers in appalling low-wage conditions to minimize labor costs. The authors trace the development of the new networks of globalized mass production in the IT industry and the reorganization of work since the 1990s, capturing the systemic nature of an industry-wide restructuring of production and work in the global context. Their wide-ranging and detailed analysis takes the debates on the globalization of production beyond narrow perspectives of determining criteria of "success" for participation in global networks. Rather, they emphasize the changing nature of work, employment relations, and labor policies and their implications for the possibilities of sustainable economic and social development.

In this deeply original study of the Mongols, leading scholar Uradyn E. Bulag draws on key themes of cosmopolitanism and friendship to develop a new concept he terms "collaborative nationalism." He uses this concept to explore the dilemma of minorities in China as they fight against being embraced too tightly in the bonds of "friendship." Through a rich array of case studies, Bulag illuminates the fierce competition among China, Japan, Mongolia, and Russia to appropriate the Mongol heritage to buttress their own national identities. Weighing the options the Mongols face, he argues that the ethnopolitical is not so much about identity as it is about the capacity of an ethnic group to decide and organize its own vision of itself, both within its community and in relation to other groups.

This book offers the first detailed study of the essential relationship between thought reform and the "dangerous classes"-the prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other "lumpenproletarians" the Communists saw as a threat to society and the revolution. Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smith explores reformatories as institutions dedicated to molding new socialist citizens and as symbolic spaces in which internees, cadres, and the ordinary masses made sense of what it meant to be a member of the people in the People's Republic. Drawing on extensive, previously unavailable source material, she offers convincing answers to much-debated questions about the development and future of Chinese political culture.