How do contemporary Westerners and Tibetans understand not only what it means to be 'Buddhist', but what it means to be hailed as one from 'the West' or from 'Tibet'? This anthropological study examines the encounter between Western travellers and Tibetan exiles in Bodhanath, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal and analyses the importance of Buddhism in discussions of political, cultural and religious identity. Moran examines how Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhism are 'created' in the encounters taking place in Bodhanath and how Western Buddhists come to terms with their imagined, then reified...

Hong Kong has become a by-word for all that is modern and sparkling in Asia today.
Yet tourist brochures still play with the old cliche of Hong Kong as a place where 'East meets West'. Images of so-called 'traditional' China, junks sailing Victoria Harbour or old women praying to gods in smoky temples, mingle with those portraying Hong Kong as a consumer and business paradise.
This collection of essays attempts to transcend the old polarities. It looks at modern Hong Kong in all its splendour and diversity in the run-up to its re-absorption into Greater China in mid-97, through the...

Presenting a study of a group of potters living in a small community in the south of Japan, this work includes a look at the problems they face in the production, marketing and aesthetic appraisal of a kind of stoneware pottery generally referred to as mingei, or folk art. It shows how different people in an art world bring to bear different sets of values as they negotiate the meaning of mingei and try to decide whether a pot is art, or mere craft.

This is a study of a group of potters living in a small community in the south of Japan, and about the problems they face in the production, marketing and aesthetic appraisal of a kind of stoneware pottery generally referred to as mingei, or folk art. It shows how different people in an art world bring to bear different sets of values as they negotiate the meaning of mingei and try to decide whether a pot is 'art', 'folk art', or mere 'craft'.
At the same time, this book is an unusual monograph in that it reaches beyond the mere study of an isolated community to trace the origins and...

Examines the ways in of organising work, rank, compensation, and promotion inside a large Japanese company in Hong Kong, and its spiritual training, to reveal the socio-economic base of managerial control. A must for anthropologists and Japanologists.

This text examines how Thailand has been experiencing a crisis of cultural identity since the 1970s, a crisis rooted in the fundamental questioning of the hierarchical socio-political order that emerged in the 1970s and the failure of the authorities to reimpose that order.

By considering the practice of globalisation, these essays describe changes, variations and innovations to Chinese food in many parts of the world. The book reviews and broadens classic theories about ethnic and social identity formation through the examination of Chinese food, providing a powerful testimony to the impact of late 20th century globalisation.

This study looks at the multiple relations between the ethnographic representations of the Montagnard ethnic groups in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the changing historical context in and for which the ethnographies were produced and consumed. There are two major arguments developed here. It is argued that economic, political and military interests within a specific historical context condition ethnographic practice. This is not, however, a one-way process. The author also argues that the ensuing ethnographic discourses in turn influence the historical context by suggesting and...

This volume builds on the work of Talal Asad, Charles Taylor, and others who have engaged the issue of secularism(s) and in socio-political life. It seeks to examine theories of secularism/secularity and then examine concrete ethnographic cases in order to further the theoretical discussion.