Overcoming Passion examines the passion for race in contemporary Malaysia. Broadly the essays look at the disjunction between the falsity of race as a scientific category and the entrenched belief that race determines one's rightful identity. They probe the ways in which individual minds and institutions of power fail or refuse to recognise and act in accordance with the knowledge that race exists only insofar as its existence is sustained by the believer's belief in it. The contributors draw from a burgeoning but under-examined archive of Malaysia-related social texts, ranging from...

Despite late reconsideration, a dominant paradigm rooted in Orientalist essentialisations of Islam as statically 'legalistic' and Muslims as uniformly 'transgressive' when local customs are engaged, continues to distort perspectives of South Asia's past and present. This has led to misrepresentations of pre-colonial Muslim norms and undue emphasis on colonial reforms alone when charting the course to post-coloniality. This book presents and challenges staple perspectives with a comprehensive reinterpretation of doctrinal sources, literary expressions and colonial records spanning the period...

What is behind the changing attitudes towards intellectual property in India and China? This exploration of empirically-based research comparisons on the character of intellectual property systems found in these two countries, offers answers to three key questions: what are the drivers that have moved them towards a closer embrace of IP norms, how have domestic and systemic influences shaped the character of this embrace, and how have state and non-state actors interacted within the international system to promote this transformation? Focusing on the software and IT services industries, it...

The fate of local places increasingly rests on their capability to capitalize on their highly specific local cultural resources. Cultural Commodities in Japanese Rural Revitalization: Tsugaru Nuri Lacquerware and Tsugaru Shamisen examines the dynamics of this reality for the Tsugaru District of the Aomori Prefecture, Japan, and its two dominant cultural commodities, a lacquerware and a musical performance. Organized on the basis of policy, production and consumption, the research points to historical trajectory and a combinative conceptual-operational space as the means of identifying...

A timely and groundbreaking work, here is a comprehensive analysis of the interactions between religion and technology in Asia today. How does the use of technology affect people's experience of spirituality and the formation of religious identity and community? How do developments in the latest technological breakthroughs such as the Internet influence the ways people constitute themselves as social beings, and how does it shape their experience of the sacred and the divine? Conversely, to what extent, and in what ways do religious beliefs and practices shape people's attitude towards new...

Scholars have extensively studied the entry of restaurant chains such as McDonald's into Asia and their reception, while attention has also been paid to ethnic restaurants as agents of cultural globalization. But what about the globalization of artisanal foods led by professional workers themselves? This book looks at artisanal pizza in Japan as a cultural object globalized and domesticated through the agency of the food producer, and shows that not only the food, but also the craftsperson, is going global. The volume analyzes the reception of pizza in Japan, the transnational flow of pizza...

This book examines recent reforms and innovations in school music education within the changing societies of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. These three regions share a common historical culture but have had diverse socio-political experiences. Whilst some musical knowledge is common to all three, some is particular to one or two and depends on their responses to globalization, localization and national identity. This book aims to compare how music education in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei has adjusted to the forces of globalization, localization and Sinofication. It contributes...

Revitalization of religious and cultural traditions is taking place in nearly all contemporary Asian societies, as is shown in Faith in the Future: Understanding the Revitalization of Religions and Cultural Traditions in Asia. Revitalization is not unique to Asia, it is one of the most significant new global trends in religion and society. While they are a response to globalization and rapid change, revitalization movements are not backward looking but represent a struggle by local people for their right to determine their own future in a changing world, while also reflecting their...

Since the start of the 1990s, Central Asia has been the main purveyor of migrants in the post-Soviet space. These massive migrations due to social upheavals over the last twenty years impact issues of governance; patterns of social adaptation; individual and collective identities; and gender relations in Central Asia. This volume raises the importance of internal migrations, those at a regional, intra-Central Asian, level, labor migrations to Russia, and carries us as far away to the Uzbek migrants based in Istanbul, New York, or Seoul, as well as to the young women of Tashkent who head to...

Myanmar-Burma has one of the largest concentrations of Buddhist nuns and monks in the world today. In Renunciation and Empowerment of Buddhist Nuns in Myanmar-Burma, Kawanami traces the nun's scholarly lineage in modern Myanmar history and examines their contemporary religious position in Myanmar's social and political contexts. Although their religious status may appear ambiguous from a textual viewpoint, it is argued that their large presence is a clear indication as to the important functions Buddhist nuns perform in the monastic community. Sagaing Hill where the main research was...