In Global Hakka: Hakka Identity in the Remaking Jessieca Leo offers a needed update on Hakka history and a reassessment of Hakka identity in the global and transnational contexts. Leo gives fresh insights into concepts such as ethnicity, identity, Han, Chineseness, overseas Chinese, and migration in relation to Hakka identity. Globalization, transnationalism, deterritorialization and migration drive the rapid transformation and reformation of Hakka identity to the point of no return. Dehakkalization through cultural adaptation or genetic transfer has created an elastic identity in the...

In Contested Community, the authors analyze the Chinese immigrant community in Cuba between the years 1900 1968. While popular literature of the era portrayed the diasporic group as a closed, inassimilable ethnic enclave, closer inspection instead reveals numerous economic, political, and ethnic divisions. As with all organizations, asymmetrical power relations permeated Havana s Barrio Chino and the larger Chinese Cuban community. The authors of Contested Community use difficult-to-access materials from Cuba s national archive to offer a unique and insightful interpretation of...

Based on long-term ethnographic study, this is the first comprehensive work on the Chinese popular religion in Malaysia. It analyses temples and communities in historical and contemporary perspective, the diversity of deities and Chinese speech groups, religious specialists and temple services, the communal significance of the Hungry Ghosts Festival, the relationship between religion and philanthropy as seen through the lens of such Chinese religious organization as shantang (benevolent halls) and Dejiao (Moral Uplifting Societies), as well as the development and transformation of Taoist...

In The Price and Promise of Specialness, Jin Li Lim revises narratives on the overseas Chinese and the People’s Republic of China by analysing the Communist approach to ‘overseas Chinese affairs’ in New China’s first decade as a function of a larger political economy. Jin Li Lim shows how the party-state centred its approach towards the overseas Chinese on a perception of their financial utility and thus sought to offer them a special identity and place in New China, so as to unlock their riches. Yet, this contradicted the quest for socialist transformation, and as its early...

Denver’s Chinatown 1875-1900: Gone But Not Forgotten explores the coming of the Chinese to the Western frontier and their experiences in Denver during its early development from a supply station for the mining camps to a flourishing urban center. The complexity of race, class, immigration, politics, and economic policies interacted dynamically and influenced the life of early Chinese settlers in Denver. The Denver Riot, as a consequence of political hostility and racial antagonism against the Chinese, transformed the life of Denver’s Chinese, eventually leading to the disappearance of...

Based on long-term ethnographic study, this is the first comprehensive work on the Chinese popular religion in Malaysia. It analyses temples and communities in historical and contemporary perspective, the diversity of deities and Chinese speech groups, religious specialists and temple services, the communal significance of the Hungry Ghosts Festival, the relationship between religion and philanthropy as seen through the lens of such Chinese religious organization as shantang (benevolent halls) and Dejiao (Moral Uplifting Societies), as well as the development and transformation of Taoist...

Chinese in Dubai offers the first book-length study of the experiences of overseas Chinese living in the most prominent global city in the Arabian Gulf and the broader Middle East region. Evolving around three themes—money, pride, and spirituality, this book delineates the changing shape of Chinese spaces in metropolitan Dubai, explicates how a frontier mentality affects intergroup relations, identity construction, and religious experiences in the Chinese diaspora. It documents how the Chinese make sense of their struggles, sufferings, prosperity, and success in relation to Dubai’s fast...

The last person to ‘pass’ White Australia’s Dictation Test did so in 1907 by submitting a watercolour entitled ‘Advance Australia Fair. For the next 50 years of its existence the thereafter more carefully trained officials ensured no one ever passed again. Here is detailed how the White Australia Policy came to have a fake test of dictation at the heart of its administration. Beginning as an inspired piece of hypocrisy designed to preserve the semblance of imperial equality, in the hands of the early Commonwealth of Australia this ‘education test’ quickly evolved into a test it...