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How did nerves and neuroses take the place of ghosts and spirits in Meiji Japan? How does Natsume Soseki’s canonical…
novel Kokoro pervert the Freudian teleology of sexual development? What do we make of Jacques Lacan’s infamous claim that because of the nature of their language the Japanese people were unanalyzable? And how are we to understand the re-awakening of collective memory occasioned by the sudden appearance of a Japanese Imperial soldier stumbling out of the jungle in Guam in 1972? In addressing these and other questions, the essays collected here theorize the relation of unconscious fantasy and perversion to discourses of nation, identity, and history in Japan. Against a tradition that claims that Freud’s method, as a Western discourse, makes a bad ‘fit’with Japan, this volume argues that psychoanalytic reading offers valuable insights into the ways in which ‘Japan’ itself continues to function as a psychic object. By reading a variety of cultural productions as symptomatic elaborations of unconscious and symbolic processes rather than as indexes to cultural truths, the authors combat the truisms of modernization theory and the seductive pull of culturalism. This volume also offers a much needed psychoanalytic alternative to the area studies convention that reads narratives of all sorts as "windows" offering insights into a fetishized Japanese culture. As such, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese literature, history, culture, and psychoanalysis more generally.How did East and West Germany and Japan reconstitute national identity after World War II? Did all three experience parallel…
reactions to national trauma and reconstruction? History education shaped how these nations reconceived their national identities. Because the content of history education was controlled by different actors, history education materials framed national identity in very different ways. In Japan, where the curriculum was controlled by bureaucrats bent on maintaining their purported neutrality, materials focused on the empirical building blocks of history (who? where? what?) at the expense of discussions of historical responsibility. In East Germany, where party cadres controlled the curriculum, students were taught that World War II was a capitalist aberration. In (West) Germany, where teachers controlled the curriculum, students were taught the lessons of shame and then regeneration after historians turned away from grand national narratives. This book shows that constructions of national identity are not easily malleable on the basis of moral and political concerns only, but that they are subject to institutional constraints and opportunities. In an age when post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation has become a major focus of international policies, the analysis offers important implications for the parallel revision of portrayals of national history and the institutional reconstruction of policy-making regimes.South-East Asia is one of the most complex regions in the world as far as ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity…
is concerned with an extremely rich ancient and contemporary history. Because of this, it offers an exceptionally rich field of study for inter-ethnic relations. This book examines interethnic relationships between groups and the dynamics of exchange networks throughout Asia and includes case studies based in Vietnam, Burma, Laos, Nepal, China, and Siberia. The innovative aspect of this book lies in the fact that the contributors examine relationships between groups and the dynamics of exchange networks across Asia rather than ethnic groups studied in isolation. Rendering the important moments of daily life of ethnic groups and focussing on the exchanges between groups sharing a specific social space, this approach, today still rarely used in Asian anthropology, allows systems of exchange to emerge and for us to understand the systems of power and local leadership from the inside out. Inter-Ethnic Dynamics in Asia will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian culture and society, ethnicity and regional anthropology.Radical Islam in the Former Soviet Union (Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series)
By Galina M. Yemelianova. 2010
This is the first comprehensive and comparative examination of Islamic radicalisation in the Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union…
since the end of Communism. Since the 1990s, the ex-Soviet Muslim Volga-Urals, Caucasus and Central Asia have been among the most volatile and dynamic zones of Islamic radicalisation in the Islamic East. Although partially driven by a wider Islamic resurgence which began in the late 1970s in the Middle East, the book argues that radicalisation is a post-Soviet phenomenon triggered by the collapse of Communism, and the break-up of the de facto unitary Soviet empire. The book considers the considerable differences in perceptions and manifestations of radical Islam in the republics, as well as the level of its doctrinal and political impact. It demonstrates how the particular histories of the regions’ Muslim peoples - especially the length and depth of their Islamisation - have influenced the nature and scope of their radicalisation. Other significant factors include the mobilising power of the global jihadist network, and most significantly the level of social and economic hardship. Based on extensive empirical research including interviews with leading members of the political and religious elite, the Islamist opposition as well as ordinary muslims, the book reveals how unofficial radical Islam has turned into a potent ideology of social mobilisation. It identifies the different dynamics at work and how these relate to each other, assesses the level of foreign involvement and evaluates the implications of the rise of Islamic radicalism for particular post-Soviet states, post-Soviet Eurasia and the wider international community.This book disputes the traditional argument that the equal inheritance system hinders the growth of Chinese family business, approaching this…
not only in terms of economic capital, but also in terms of human capital such as education and leadership, and social networks. Zheng argues that most of the family business patriarchs only focus on the passing on economic capital, but give little attention to human capital and social capital when the come to the stage to transfer control to the next level. It further elaborates that the equal inheritance system itself isn’t the destructive force that weakens family business competitiveness, but can assist economic development by generating dynamism and capital. Based on extensive primary research, the work discusses how equal division encourages sibling comparison, analysing how such comparisons initially generate stress and anxiety but will ultimately galvanize competition, benefiting the business. The author also assesses how family division can offer initial economic human and social capitals that can motivate siblings to start their own businesses and be free from the subjugation sometimes associated with a family firm. Through the evaluation of these issues the book argues that the equal inheritance system can be regarded as the origin of the self-employment mentality, which not only fosters the growth of Chinese family business by plays crucial role in promoting economic development. Providing a valuable contribution to the field, this work will be of great interest to all scholars of Chinese and Asian business.Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: From Third World to the World of the Third (Routledge Studies in Development and Society #21)
By Anjan Chakrabarti, Anup Kumar Dhar. 2010
Challenging the more conventional approaches to dislocation and resettlement that are the usual focus of discussion on the topic, this…
book offers a unique theory of dislocation in the form of primitive accumulation. Interrogating the ‘reformist-managerial’ and ‘radical-movementist’ approaches, it historicizes and politicizes the event of dislocation as a moment to usher in capitalism through the medium of development. Such a framework offers alternative avenues to rethinking dislocation and resettlement, and indeed the very idea of development. Arguing that dislocation should not be seen as a necessary step towards achieving progress - as it is claimed in the development discourse - the authors show that dislocation emerges as a socio-political constituent of constructing capitalism. This book will be of interest to academics working on Development Studies, especially on issues relating to the political economy of development and globalization.Synthesizing political, anthropological and psychological perspectives, this book addresses the everyday causes and appeal of long-term involvement in extreme political…
violence in urban Pakistan. Taking Pakistan’s ethno nationalist Mohajir party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) as a case study, it explores how certain men from the ethnic community of Mohajirs are recruited to the roles and statuses of political killers, and sustain violence as a primary social identity and lifestyle over a period of some years. By drawing on detailed fieldwork in areas involved in the Karachi conflict, the author contributes to understandings of violence, tracing the development of violent aspects of Mohajir nationalism via an exploration of political and cultural contexts of Pakistan’s history, and highlighting the repetitive homology of the conflict with the earlier violence of Partition. Through a local comparison of ethnic and religious militancy she also updates the current situation of social and cultural change in Karachi, which is dominantly framed in terms of Islamist radicalization and modernization. In her examination, governance and civil society issues are integrated with the political and psychological dimensions of mobilization processes and violence at micro-, meso- and macro- levels. This book injects a critical and innovative voice into the ongoing debates about the nature and meaning of radicalization and violence, as well as the specific implications it has for similar, contemporary conflicts in Pakistan and the developing world.Truth on Trial in Thailand: Defamation, Treason, and Lèse-Majesté (Rethinking Southeast Asia)
By David Streckfuss. 2010
Since 2005, Thailand has been in crisis, with unprecedented political instability and the worst political violence seen in the country…
in decades. In the aftermath of a military coup in 2006, Thailand’s press freedom ranking plunged, while arrests for lèse-majesté have skyrocketed to levels unknown in the modern world. Truth on Trial in Thailand traces the 110-year trajectory of defamation-based laws in Thailand. The most prominent of these is lèse-majesté, but defamation aspects also appear in laws on sedition and treason, the press and cinema, anti-communism, contempt of court, insulting of religion, as well as libel. This book makes the case that despite the appearance of growing democratization, authoritarian structures and urges still drive politics in Thailand; the long-term effects of defamation law adjudication has skewed the way that Thai society approaches and perceives "truth." Employing the work of Habermas, Foucault, Agamben, and Schmitt to construct an alternative framework to understand Thai history, Streckfuss contends that Thai history has become "suspended" since 1958, and repeatedly declining to face the truth of history has set the stage for an endless state of crisis. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of South East Asian politics, Asian history, and media and communication. David Streckfuss is an independent scholar who has lived in Thailand for more than 20 years. His work primarily concerns human rights, and political and cultural history.This book is a critical feminist analysis of sex trafficking. Arguing that trafficking in girls and women is a product…
of the social construction of gender and other dimensions of power and status within a particular culture and at a particular historical moment, this book offers the necessary locally grounded analysis. Focusing on the case of Nepal, from where 5,000 to 7,000 thousands of Nepali girls and women are trafficked each year primarily to India, Mary Crawford assesses how the social construction of trafficking - the concept and its representation in discourse - are influenced by the dynamics of gender, caste, and the development establishment. The defining figure is an innocent, naïve young girl being lured or duped into leaving the safety of her village. The trafficking victim is portrayed as "backward"; however, she is "backward" in specific ways that resonate with Nepal’s struggle to resist and yet encompass Western influence. This view may lead to paradoxical effects in which efforts to protect girls and women instead restrict their human rights. Rather than seeing women as universalized victims, Crawford assesses how the social construction of trafficking in a particular society affects girls and women who live in that society. In this book, the author’s voice as a woman, a feminist, and a social scientist immersed in a "foreign" way of life, illuminates aspects of this process and highlights the subjectivity of urban women. It makes the connection between Nepali subjectivities and a problem of international significance, the trafficking of girls and women. The book provides a model for other locally grounded accounts of sex trafficking to counter the universalizing rhetoric of the mass media and some anti-trafficking activists, filling a niche in South Asian Studies and Women’s Studies.Drawing on first-hand materials collected from the Chinese and Japanese literature as well as interviews with more than twenty filmmakers…
and scholars Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau provides a solid historical account of the complex interactions between Japanese and Hong Kong film industries from the 1930s to 1970s. The author describes in detail how Japan’s efforts during the 1930s and 1940s to produce a "Greater East Asian cinema" led to many different kinds of collaborations between the filmmakers from China, Hong Kong and Japan, and how such development had laid the foundation for more exchanges between the cinemas in the post-war period. The period covered by the book is the least understood period of the East Asian film history. Filling the gaps surrounding one of the most important but least understood periods of Asian film history this books discusses facts and resources once obscured by controversial issues related to wartime affairs with new insights and perspectives. This book is an invaluable source of information for understanding how the current East Asian film networks came into existence by looking beyond conventional single-case studies and adopting a transnational perspective in tracing the connections between different film industries.Inside the New China: An Ethnographic Memoir
By Gene Ayres. 2010
China is no longer a Third World country. It is now the world's fastest growing economy. Even after the 2008…
Olympics, this fact may come as a shock to many Americans, who continue to think that the Chinese still march around in brown uniforms with red stars on their caps arresting dissidents for wearing capitalist Levis. China has at last count, more than half a billion cell phone users. Indeed, the Chinese are not only the world's leading users of mobile phones, but also the leading suppliers. No Chinese student goes without one and even a donkey cart driver chatting away on a mobile is not an uncommon sight.China's educated New Generation is possibly the most highly motivated force since the post-World War II generation in America. The young people of China are the next wave of a flourishing Chinese middle class now estimated as 13.5 % of the population, and expected to be 600 million strong by 2015, according toBusiness Week. These young people want to drive cars like ours, live in houses like ours, own condos near the beach, wear designer clothes, and carry cell phones, iPods, camcorders, digital cameras, and MP3 players, just like Americans. Tens of millions already do.During a thirty-month stay in Chinabetween 2004 and 2007, Ayres was presented to soldiers straight out of boot camp, toasted by military generals and governors, invited to parties with local leaders as a ""foreign expert and dignitary,"" and begged to counsel dissidents and the lovelorn. He rode buses jammed with peasants hoping that they would actually be paid at the end of the month. He dickered with farmers in open markets and street vendors desperate to make ends meet. He dealt with smooth, savvy merchants in upscale department stores; and debated policy with Communist Party bosses. This revised paperback edition of the author's earlier work, A Billion to One, is a vivid, intimate account of China as it is today.Liberalizing, Feminizing and Popularizing Health Communications in Asia
By Liew Kai Khiun. 2010
Liberalizing, Feminizing and Popularizing Health Communications in Asia provides insights into the manner in which biomedical discourses are communicated and…
portrayed in Asia in light of the rapidly evolving socio-cultural, technological and epidemiological undercurrents. Highlighting the more pluralized and interactive dynamics in the appropriation and dissemination of medical and public health knowledge, its specific case studies challenge the notions of the one way transmission of medicine by modern Western trained doctors and public health officials to ignorant patients and masses, particularly in the non-Western world. With specific examples drawn from popular media, this volume examines the extent to which these developments have given the broader public both greater access to information and choices. Multidisciplinary in scope and truly international in focus, it relates the everyday of health communications to more macro social trends on the Asian continent and will be of interest to scholars within science and technology studies, media and cultural studies and sociology alike.Blaze of Light: The Inspiring True Story of Green Beret Medic Gary Beikirch, Medal of Honor Recipient
By Marcus Brotherton. 2020
For fans of Unbroken and Hacksaw Ridge comes the powerful true story of a Medal of Honor recipient who faced…
more than his fair share of battles—and overcame them through perseverance and faith. &“What Gary Beikirch did to receive his medal is unforgettable—and the story of what he overcame afterward is as big and moving as they come.&”—Gary Sinise After dawn the siege began. It was April 1, 1970, and Army Green Beret medic Gary Beikirch knew the odds were stacked against their survival. Some 10,000 enemy soldiers sought to obliterate the twelve American Special Forces troops and 400 indigenous fighters who stood fast to defend 2,300 women and children inside the village of Dak Seang. For his valor and selflessness during the ruthless siege, Beikirch would be awarded a Medal of Honor, the nation&’s highest and most prestigious military decoration. But Gary returned home wounded in body, mind, and soul. To find himself again, Gary retreated to a cave in the mountains of New England, where a redemptive encounter with God allowed Gary to find peace. New York Times best-selling author Marcus Brotherton chronicles the incredible true story of a person who changed from lost to found. Gripping and unforgettable, and written with a rich and vivid narrative voice, Blaze of Light will inspire you to answer hurt with ingenuity, to reach for faith, and to find clarity and peace within any season of storm.Honour Killings and Criminal Justice: Social and Legal Challenges in Turkey
By Ferya Taş-Çifçi. 2020
Despite recent reforms to the Turkish Penal Code, the country retains a high level of honour-based violence. This book analyses…
the motives behind honour-based violence in Turkey and examines the criminal justice system’s approach to this type of crime. The work takes a socio-legal approach to explore the concepts of honour, patriarchy, and hierarchy, along with the roles of culture and tradition. It also examines how the legal system deals with this phenomenon, focusing on the decisions of the criminal courts in honour killing cases and drawing on prisoner interviews. These analyses show the extent to which the State follows a patriarchal approach when dealing with honour killings and inform recommendations for improving the legal and criminal justice system so as to deter crimes of this nature.Visitors: An American Feminist in East Central Europe
By Ann Snitow. 2020
A feminist organizer in East Central Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall reveals the struggles of women fighting…
for their rights during the rise of the Right in EuropeVisitors tells the story of Ann Snitow’s adventures as a Western feminist helping to build a new, post-communist feminist movement in Eastern Central Europe. Snitow stumbles onto this fast-changing, chaotic scene by chance, but falls in love with the passionate feminists she meets in Poland, the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania. What kinds of feminism should they hope for?Visitors is a book about forging enduring relationships and creating formerly unimaginable institutions—a feminist school, the Network of East-West Women, women’s centers, gender studies programs. It is about unity amid fractiousness and perseverance through uncertainty, Snitow’s flickering lodestar. Visitors moves gracefully between vivid anecdote, political analysis, and unsparing introspection. It is richly peopled with “brilliant” comrades and vexing detractors alike, all described with respect and humor. Every sentence is imbued with the experience and insight of this sui generis feminist activist, writer, and pedagogue of 50 years. Most of all, Visitors is the story of friendship, the heart and sinew of the leaderless feminist movement. Reading like the best historical novel, it is intimate and worldly, resolutely unsentimental yet finally, even as the political skies darken, optimistic in the conviction that feminism can make life meaningful, fascinating, fun, pleasurable—and better for everyone, even as better is redefined again and again.Explaining Inequalities in School Achievement: A Realist Analysis
By Roy Nash. 2010
Inequalities in educational opportunity have been a persistent feature of all school systems for generations, with conventional explanations of differences…
in educational attainment tending to be reduced to either quantitative or non-quantitative 'list' theories. In this groundbreaking book, Roy Nash argues that a realist framework for the sociological explanation of educational group differences can, and must be, constructed. A move to such an explanatory framework will allow us to take into account the social influences of early childhood development, the later emergence of social identities, and the nature of the social class impact of educational and career decision-making. By building on the critical analyses of the theories of Bourdieu, Boudon and Bernstein, this book makes a vital contribution to the current policy and theoretical debate about the causes of educational inequality.Visitors: An American Feminist in East Central Europe
By Ann Snitow. 2020
A feminist organizer in East Central Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall reveals the struggles of women fighting…
for their rights during the rise of the Right in EuropeVisitors tells the story of Ann Snitow’s adventures as a Western feminist helping to build a new, post-communist feminist movement in Eastern Central Europe. Snitow stumbles onto this fast-changing, chaotic scene by chance, but falls in love with the passionate feminists she meets in Poland, the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania. What kinds of feminism should they hope for?Visitors is a book about forging enduring relationships and creating formerly unimaginable institutions—a feminist school, the Network of East-West Women, women’s centers, gender studies programs. It is about unity amid fractiousness and perseverance through uncertainty, Snitow’s flickering lodestar. Visitors moves gracefully between vivid anecdote, political analysis, and unsparing introspection. It is richly peopled with “brilliant” comrades and vexing detractors alike, all described with respect and humor. Every sentence is imbued with the experience and insight of this sui generis feminist activist, writer, and pedagogue of 50 years. Most of all, Visitors is the story of friendship, the heart and sinew of the leaderless feminist movement. Reading like the best historical novel, it is intimate and worldly, resolutely unsentimental yet finally, even as the political skies darken, optimistic in the conviction that feminism can make life meaningful, fascinating, fun, pleasurable—and better for everyone, even as better is redefined again and again.This book offers a major contribution to the study and analysis of divination, based on continuing fieldwork with the Mambila…
in Cameroon. It seeks to return attention to the details of divinatory practice, using the questions asked and life histories to help understand the perspective of the clients rather than that of the diviners. Drawing on a corpus of more than 600 cases, David Zeitlyn reconsiders theories of divination and compares Mambila spider divination with similar systems in the area. A detailed case study is examined and analysed using conversational analytic principles. The regional comparison considers different kinds of explanation for different features of social organization, leading to a discussion of the continuing utility of moderated functionalism. The book will be of interest to area specialists and scholars concerned with religion, rationality, and decision-making from disciplines including anthropology, African studies, and philosophy.The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post–Cold War New Mexico | New Edition
By Joseph Masco. 2006
An important investigation of the sociocultural fallout of America's work on the atomic bombIn The Nuclear Borderlands, Joseph Masco offers…
an in-depth look at the long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project. Masco examines how diverse groups in and around Los Alamos, New Mexico understood and responded to the U.S. nuclear weapons project in the post–Cold War period. He shows that the American focus on potential nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War obscured the broader effects of the nuclear complex on society, and that the atomic bomb produced a new cognitive orientation toward daily life, reconfiguring concepts of time, nature, race, and citizenship. This updated edition includes a brand-new preface by the author discussing current developments in nuclear politics and the scientific impact of the nuclear age on the present epoch of a human-altered climate.Burn It Down!: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution
By Breanne Fahs. 2020
The most comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos, chronicling our rage and dreams from the nineteenth century to todayIn this landmark…
collection spanning three centuries and four waves of feminist activism and writing, Burn It Down! is a testament to what is possible when women are driven to the edge. The manifesto—raging and wanting, quarreling and provoking—has always played a central role in feminism, and it’s the angry, brash feminism we need now. Collecting over seventy-five manifestos from around the world, Burn It Down! is a rallying cry and a call to action. Breanne Fahs argues that we need manifestos in all their urgent rawness—their insistence that we have to act now, that we must face this, that the bleeding edge of rage and defiance ignites new and revolutionary possibilities is where new ideas are born.