Exploring sensitive issues often hidden to outsiders, this engaging study traces the transformation and economic development of a south China village during the first tumultuous decade of reform. Drawing on a wealth of intimate detail, Ku explores the new sense of risk and mood of insecurity experienced in the post-reform era in Ku Village, a typical hamlet beyond the margins of richer suburban areas or fertile farmland. Villagers' dissatisfaction revolves around three key issues: the rising cost of living, mounting agricultural expenses, and the forcible implementation of birth-control...

Exploring contemporary Okinawan culture, politics, and historical memory, this book argues that the long Japanese tradition of defining Okinawa as a subordinate and peripheral part of Japan means that all claims of Okinawan distinctiveness necessarily become part of the larger debate over contemporary identity. The contributors trace the renascence of the debate in the burst of cultural and political expression that has flowered in the past decade, with the rapid growth of local museums and memorials and the huge increase in popularity of distinctive Okinawan music and literature, as well as...

One of the largest political protests in contemporary Korean history, the May 1980 Kwangju Uprising still exerts a profound, often contested, influence in Korean society. Through a deft combination of personal reflections and academic analysis, Contentious Kwangju offers a comprehensive examination of the multiple, shifting meanings of this seminal event and explains how the memory of Kwangju has affected Korean life from politics to culture. The first half of the book offers highly personal perspectives on the details of the uprising itself, including the Citizens' Army, the fleeting days of...

This volume challenges the dominant discourse that perceives Asian women as either "mail-order" brides or overseas workers. Providing the first sustained critique of the artificial analytical division between brides and workers, the book demonstrates women's transition from brides to workers and from workers to brides. Focusing on how women workers use marriage as a strategy to gain citizenship and how migrants for marriage become workers, the authors present these modern Asian women in their multidimensional roles as wives, workers, mothers, and citizens. The case studies explore a wide...

In this fresh and original analysis, Brian J. McVeigh confronts both the demonizers and apologists of Japan. He argues persuasively that far from being unique, Japanese nationalism becomes demystified once 'management' and 'mysticism'--the same processes and practices that operate in other national states--are taken into account. Stripping away Orientalist-inspired misconceptions, the author stresses the variety and relative intensity of nationalisms, ranging from economic, ethnic, and educational to cultural, gendered, and religious. He moves beyond state-centered ideologies to explore the...

Using the field of genetics as a case study, this book follows the troubled development of modern natural science in China from the 1920s, through Mao's China, to the present post-socialist era. Through detailed portraits of key scientists and institutions, basic dilemmas are explored: how to control nature with science, how to gain independence from foreign-controlled science, how to get scientists out from under control of ideology and the state. Using the field of genetics as a case study, this book follows the troubled development of modern natural science in China from the 1920s, through...

Crime long has been a silent partner in China's march to modernization, leading the regime to make law and order as central a priority as economic growth and the promise of prosperity. This groundbreaking study offers the first comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of Chinese crime, policing, and punishment. A multidisciplinary group of leading scholars draw on a rich body of empirical data and rare archival research to illuminate seldom-explored theoretical dimensions of legal ideology and reform as well as the linkages between crime and control to broader themes of law, modernization, and...

Crime long has been a silent partner in China's march to modernization, leading the regime to make law and order as central a priority as economic growth and the promise of prosperity. This groundbreaking study offers the first comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of Chinese crime, policing, and punishment. A multidisciplinary group of leading scholars draw on a rich body of empirical data and rare archival research to illuminate seldom-explored theoretical dimensions of legal ideology and reform as well as the linkages between crime and control to broader themes of law, modernization, and...

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...

Social movements have played a vital role in Indian politics since well before the inception of India as a new nation in 1947. During the Nehruvian era, from Independence to Nehru's death in 1964, poverty alleviation was a foundational standard against which policy proposals and political claims were measured; at this time, movement activism was directly accountable to this state discourse. However, the role of social movements in India has shifted during the last several decades to accompany a changed political focus--from state to market and from reigning ideologies of secularism to credos...