Books in the NIAS Monographs series

This mammoth study is a major contribution to the study of Chinese literature, making available to scholars a genuine storyteller's script from China's Yangzhou oral tradition, dated to the late Qing period (1880-1910). This rare script is published in its complete form (all 367 pages), both in facsimile and transcription, with an English translation also made. Its publication is of high importance not only to preserve knowledge about one of the famous oral traditions of China, but also as a unique documentation of the interplay between orality and literacy in Chinese storytelling. The book is also the first translation into a European language of the popular 'Western Han' narrative, one of a corpus of Chinese semi-historical romances brought to life in recent decades after the discovery in 1974 of the terracotta army commemorating the life and achievements of the first Chinese emperor. Moreover, this storyteller's version is unique and entertaining. The work is an ideal classroom book for students studying Chinese history, literature, oral literature, storytelling, etc.

The worldwide search for new and secure supplies of energy is especially visible in Asia where rapid industrialization in states such as China and India has fomented a scramble for energy resources. Due to entrenched societal inequities and widespread authoritarian governance, however, the pursuit of national energy security through transnational energy projects has had a devastating impact on the human and environmental security of local populations. This is especially so in Thailand and Myanmar, countries that are increasingly engaged in the cross-border energy trade. Based on extensive fieldwork and theoretical analysis, this ground-breaking book proposes a new critical approach to energy and environmental security. It also explores the important role that local and transnational environmental movements play, in the absence of effective and democratic governments, by providing 'activist environmental governance' for energy projects throughout the region. By comparing the nature of this activism under two very different political regimes, it delivers crucial theoretical insights with both academic and policy implications for the sustainable and equitable development of the South's natural resources. First published in hardback in 2014, this new, updated paperback edition offers much to scholars, professionals, policy-makers, NGOs, businesses, journalists and others working or concerned with energy issues.

At face value, this book is about medicine in Cambodia over the last hundred years. At the same time, however, by using "medicine" (in the sense of ideas, practices, and institutions relating to health and illness) as a prism through which to view colonial and post-colonial Cambodian society more generally, it offers an historical and contemporary anthropology of the nation of Cambodia. Rich in ethnographic detail derived from both contemporary anthropological fieldwork and colonial archival material, the study is an account of the simultaneous presence in Cambodia of two medical traditions: the modern, biomedical one first introduced by the French colonial power at the turn of the twentieth century, and the indigenous Khmer health cosmology. In their reliance on one or the other of the two traditions, to a large extent the Khmer people have been concerned about finding efficient medical treatment that also adheres to social norms (not least the emphasis on the morality of social relations). This concern is also evident in the prevailing medical pluralism in Cambodia today. The authors trace the interaction (and lack thereof) between these two traditions from the French colonial period via the political upheavals of the 1970s through to the present day. The result is more than a work on medical anthropology; this is a key text that also makes a significant contribution to the anthropological study of Cambodian society at large and will be an important resource for development planners and aid workers in medical and related fields.

At face value, this book is about medicine in Cambodia over the last hundred years. At the same time, however, by using "medicine" (in the sense of ideas, practices, and institutions relating to health and illness) as a prism through which to view colonial and post-colonial Cambodian society more generally, it offers an historical and contemporary anthropology of the nation of Cambodia. Rich in ethnographic detail derived from both contemporary anthropological fieldwork and colonial archival material, the study is an account of the simultaneous presence in Cambodia of two medical traditions: the modern, biomedical one first introduced by the French colonial power at the turn of the twentieth century, and the indigenous Khmer health cosmology. In their reliance on one or the other of the two traditions, to a large extent the Khmer people have been concerned about finding efficient medical treatment that also adheres to social norms (not least the emphasis on the morality of social relations). This concern is also evident in the prevailing medical pluralism in Cambodia today. The authors trace the interaction (and lack thereof) between these two traditions from the French colonial period via the political upheavals of the 1970s through to the present day. The result is more than a work on medical anthropology; this is a key text that also makes a significant contribution to the anthropological study of Cambodian society at large and will be an important resource for development planners and aid workers in medical and related fields.

This timely volume narrates the stories of medical workers in the Philippines in a multi-sited ethnography that follows aspiring migrants from Manila's vibrant nursing schools where they dream of glamorous, cosmopolitan lives abroad but find a different reality in Singapore's multicultural hospitals and nursing homes.